A headshot of Ezra from the top of chest upwards. He is a white person with black curly hair, dark eyes and brows, is wearing a navy blue shirt. Ezra's eyes gaze off camera while showing off a smirk. The headshot is set against a background of dark green leaves with light blue light patches seeping in between the branches and leaves
(Image Description: A headshot of Ezra from the top of chest upwards. He is a white person with black curly hair, dark eyes and brows, is wearing a navy blue shirt. Ezra's eyes gaze off camera while showing off a smirk. The headshot is set against a background of dark green leaves with light blue light patches seeping in between the branches and leaves.)

Ezra Benus is an artist, educator, and curator whose work addresses a range of themes such as constructions of time, relationships of care, pain as a portal, and the mundaneness of illness. Ezra’s practice is cradled by embedded Jewishness, queerness, and sickness as purviews and navigational tools in this world. Social, political, and spiritual forces collide through reflections on bodily knowledge and social constructions around values of normativity in their art.

Their practice and projects have been exhibited at Fylkingen in Stockholm, The 8th Floor, Flux Factory, NYU Gallatin Galleries, Dedalus Foundation, Gibney Dance, The Laurie M. Tisch Gallery at the JCC Manhattan, and EFA Project Space. Ezra is also one half of  Brothers Sick, a sibling artistic collaboration about politics of disability, illness, and relationships of care, with his brother Noah Benus. Brothers Sick have had commissioned work by Visual AIDS, Shape Arts UK, The Shed, and Pratt Manhattan Gallery. Most recently they created a site specific installation as part of the Crip Time exhibition at Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in Frankfurt, Germany. Their work was also listed in curator Susanne Pfeffer’s Artforum's top ten artworks of 2021.

As a cultural worker, Ezra has lectured and consulted at universities and art spaces such as Red Bull Arts in Detroit, Hunter College Art Galleries, Eyebeam, SUNY Purchase, CUE Art Foundation, York College, Princeton University, and UT Austin. Benus was an Erich Fromm Fellow at Paideia Institute for Jewish Studies in Stockholm, the first Access and Adult Learning Fellow in the education department at the Brooklyn Museum, a 2020-2021 SHIFT Artist in Residence at EFA Project Space. Ezra is also the Manager of the Disability Futures Fellowship.

Ezra was also part of the curatorial project Strijd ∞ (pronounced Stride Infinity), addressing the struggle for democratization in higher education. This project was exhibited in the Netherlands, Berlin, Ireland, and Italy, along with contributions to published articles in in the "Nomos of Images" research project, based at the Kunsthistorisches Institut (KHI) in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut, and in the Polish art history journal "Art for the Sake of Democracy". 
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