Mona Benyamin
Unravel is a video installation in the form of a horror film that collapses into itself indefinitely. Across two video channels and four speakers, a shared musical score binds together two seemingly disparate worlds. On one screen, a choir performs a choral adaptation of Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, informed by Arabic vocal traditions and arranged by Manar Hashmi. The other screen features a horror-inflected narrative starring the artist’s parents, Michel and Nahia Benyamin. The conductor’s downbeat sends the choir into song and the couple into motion. As soon as the first note is heard, the couple steps out of a car to make their way home, pursued by a menacing camera and Boléro’s infamous crescendo. This chase grows increasingly threatening, culminating in a frenzied pursuit up a spiral staircase. Sound is treated here as a camera movement, shaping the narrative and asserting itself as a protagonist. While the choir’s voices dissolve into wordless cries and sung screams directed at an absent audience, the artist’s parents appear as what film and sound theorist Michel Chion describes as voiceless. Neither mute nor silent, their mouths remain visibly open in screams that the film refuses to hear, reflecting a deeper condition of helplessness in the face of enduring violence.
2026
Two-channel video installation, 4 channel sound, 10 min