
Ezra Benus, Touch Me Tenderly (2021). Textile (acrylic, wool, cotton on poly-cotton cloth). 24 x 48 in.
Ezra Benus makes artworks exploring relationships of care, pain, and pleasure in a range of media including sculptures, rugs, and paintings. Utilizing and reorienting readymade objects relating to experiences of illness and disability such as bed pans, magic wand massagers, tourniquets, needles, heating pads, Ezra's work weaves through knowledge based in Jewishness, chronic illness, queerness to blur the arbitrary and harmful normative notions that common experiences of care/illness/disability/sexuality as needing to be kept private or out of view.