Finnegan Shannon

Finnegan Shannon ’11 (b. 1989, Berkeley, CA) is an artist experimenting with forms of access. They intervene in ableist structures with humor, earnestness, and rage. Some of their recent work includes Anti-Stairs Club Lounge, an ongoing project that gathers people together who share an aversion to stairs; Alt-Text as Poetry, a collaboration with Bojana Coklyat that explores the expressive potential of image description; and Do You Want Us Here or Not, a series of benches and cushions designed for exhibition spaces.

They have done projects with the Queens Museum, moCa Cleveland, the High Line, MMK Frankfurt, MCA Denver, and Nook Gallery. Their work has been supported by a Wynn Newhouse Award, an Eyebeam fellowship, and grants from Art Matters Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Disability Visibility Project. Their work has been written about in Art in America, BOMB Magazine, and the New York Times. They live and work in Brooklyn, NY.

Ezra Benus

Ezra Benus’ practice is cradled by embedded Jewishness, queerness, and sickness as purviews and navigational tools in this world. They are an artist, educator, and curator, raised and still based in Brooklyn, whose multi-media practice concerns constructions of values of normativity, relationships and intimacies of power, care, pain and pleasure.

Ezra was an Erich Fromm Fellow at Paideia Institute and received an Art Matters Foundation Artist2Artist Fellowship. He has had residencies with Art Beyond Sight’s Art + Disability Residency(2018-19), Wave Hill Winter Workspace (2020), SHIFT Residency at EFA (2020-21), BRIClab Contemporary Art at BRIC (2022-23). He has exhibited work in NYC at NYU Gallatin Gallery, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, Dedalus Foundation, EFA Project Space, The Shed, and internationally with Shape Arts (UK), Museion (IT), MMK Frankfurt (DE), Doris McCarthy Gallery (CA), Art Gallery Windsor (CA), Migros Museum (CH).

Ezra is also one half of Brothers Sick, a sibling artistic collaboration on disability justice, illness, spirituality, and care. Their work has been featured in publications such as Blackwood Gallery’s SDUK: Lingering, Kingdom of The Ill reader published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, Artforum (Susanne Pfeffer’s #1 artwork highlight of 2021), Pin Up, Mousse Magazine, Ocula, Art Agenda, Publico ípsilon, and Welt Kunst.