Chelsea, New York
Ezra Benus & Finnegan Shannon
Towards a Warm Embrace
Print Center New YorkTowards a Warm Embrace is a collaborative installation by New York-based artists Ezra Benus and Finnegan Shannon presented to celebrate their new benefit edition for Print Center New York, made in collaboration with Du-Good Press. In the spirit of collective care and mutual aid, the multimedia presentation transforms the Leslie and Johanna Garfield Lobby into a comfortable and accessible refuge. Visitors are invited to rest at the table, recline on a lounge chair, and use a heating pad to alleviate pain. Captioned audio of a conversation between the artists on disability culture serves as a sonic anchor, underscoring the intimacy of the space. Towards a Warm Embrace was originally commissioned by Perlman Teaching Museum at Carleton College in January 2024, and curated by Sara Cluggish. Ezra Benus is an artist, educator, and curator raised and based in Brooklyn, whose multi-media practice concerns values of normativity, relationships and intimacies of power, pain, and pleasure. Ezra is also one half of Brothers Sick (with Noah Benus), a sibling artistic collaboration steeped in explorations of disability justice, politics and histories of illness, spirituality, Jewishness, and care. Finnegan Shannon is an artist experimenting with forms of access. Some of their recent work includes Alt Text as Poetry, a collaboration with Bojana Coklyat that explores the expressive potential of image description; Do You Want Us Here or Not, a series of benches and cushions designed for exhibition spaces; and Don’t mind if I do, a conveyor-belt-centered exhibition that prioritizes rest and play.