Benny Nemer is an artist, diarist, and researcher based in Paris. Born in Montreal in 1973, he is the grandchild of Quebec potter Rosalie Namer (1925–2006), whose artistic kinship instilled in him an early aesthetic sensibility that included an appreciation of objects, a practice of epistolary writing, and a sympathy with flowers.
Benny’s multidisciplinary practice often traces the affective contours of love and longing while facilitating bonds of kinship between his audience, figures from history, and himself, taking form through audio work, performance, participatory actions, epistolary writing, and flower arranging. In addition to numerous private collections, Nemer’s work is in the permanent collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna), the Polin Museum for the History of Polish Jews (Warsaw), Thielska Galleriet (Stockholm), the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), and the Ystads Konstmuseum (Ystad). He has participated in over twenty artist residencies notably at the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), the ISCP (New York), IASPIS (Stockholm), and the MuseumsQuartier (Vienna).
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 research project. Advised by film scholar Glyn Davis and art historian Fiona Anderson, Nemer’s doctoral research critically examined the museum audio guide as a media form, turning to queer theory and contemporary museum mediation practice to expand and critically reimagine its potential. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at KASK + Conservatorium, where he is pursuing research into queer kinship in the spectre of AIDS, postcards as an artistic medium, and the archive of French author and photographer Hervé Guibert. www.nemer.be