Benny’s artistic work mediates emotional encounters with musical, botanical, art historical, and queer cultural material, encouraging deep listening and empathic viewing. In his work you will encounter audio guides, bells, bouquets, ceramic vases, enchanted forests, folding screens, gay elders, glitter, gold leaf, love letters, imaginary paintings, madrigals, megaphones, mirrors, naked men, private libraries, sex-changing flowers, sign language, subtitles, woodwinds, wrapping paper, and the voices of birds, boy sopranos, contraltos, countertenors, and sirens.

He has exhibited internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Tiroler Kunstpavillon (Innsbruck), Dazibao Centre de Photographies Actuelles (Montreal), and the Staatsbibliothek (Stuttgart); and group exhibitions at the Frankfurter Kunstverein (Frankfurt), The Power Plant Gallery of Contemporary Art (Toronto), Kunsthallen Nikolaj (Copenhagen), and the Schwules Museum (Berlin), among others. His work is part of the permanent collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, The Polin Museum for the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Thielska Galleriet Stockholm, and The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

Benny completed a practice-led PhD at the Edinburgh College of Art in 2019, where he was part of the Cruising the Seventies: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures, a three-year research project led by artists, art historians, and cultural anthropologists in Germany, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom. His artistic research critically examined the museum audio guide as a media form, turning to queer theory as well as contemporary museum mediation practice to expand and critically reimagine its potential. He has participated in artist residencies in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Poland, and Sweden.

www.nemer.be