February 10, 2025
Logan Center for the Arts, The University of Chicago
An OPC talk with artist Ben Hagari.
Ben Hagari's engagement with art is rooted in his childhood experience of growing up in the theater, where his mother worked. This early exposure shaped his interdisciplinary approach and perspective. Hagari creates tragic-comedies through film and video installations alongside animations, photographs and sculptural environments. In these pieces, a protagonist performs everyday actions within meticulously constructed scenarios, which implicitly raise broader questions about identity, communication, and the environment.
Hagari’s work dissolves the distinction between theatrical façade and backstage by opening onto spaces where magic, subterfuge, and poetry collide. A defamiliarizing effect is created through conceptual and material mimesis: make-up, props and sets are manipulated to construct an artificial yet internally consistent system of representation. These worlds are formed through mimicry and repetition, much like a child learning to speak. At the core of his practice is multidisciplinary research, drawing from theater, art history, scientific curiosities, and the history of technology.
His works have been shown in biennials, museums, galleries, film festivals, and other venues in the United States, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. He is the recipient of the 2024 Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and is currently a lecturer at Yale School of Art.