Benny Nemer (1973) is a Montreal-born artist, diarist, and researcher. His practice 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.

His work has exhibited internationally, and is part of the permanent collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna), The Polin Museum for the History of Polish Jews (Warsaw), Thielska Galleriet (Stockholm), and The National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa).

Nemer completed a practice-led PhD at the Edinburgh College of Art in 2019, where he was part of Cruising the 1970s: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures, a three-year research project led by art historians, cultural anthropologists, and artists in Germany, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom. His 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. In 2022, Nemer will begin a postdoctoral researcher position at the KASK + Conservatorium in Ghent, Belgium based on his research into Hervé Guibert’s postcard collection.  

Nemer is a core tutor for the Master of Artistic Research programme at the Royal Academy of the Arts in The Hague, Netherlands.

Curriculum Vitae

Contact Nemer by e-mail

^{Photo of Nemer enacting Tunings (2021)
with Fabrice Ramalingom and Alexis Morel by Matt Frenot}