Guy Ben-Ner (born 1969, Ramat Gan, Israel) emerged in the early 1990s as one of the pioneering voices of video art in Israel and beyond. Having studied at HaMidrasha School of Art (Beit Berl College), where he completed his B.Ed. in 1997, he went on to earn an M.F.A. from Columbia University, New York, in 2003.
Since the early 2000s, Ben-Ner has been a key voice in contemporary moving-image practice, aligning himself with a generation of artists who merge conceptual rigor with DIY filmmaking and autobiographical performance. Working at the intersection of video, sculpture and performance, his works echo and gently parody both art-historical references and popular culture, positioning the domestic sphere as a site where global narratives of labour, migration and consumerism are rehearsed and undone.
Alongside contemporaries such as Yael Bartana, Omer Fast, and Candice Breitz, Ben-Ner is part of an international generation for whom video became a primary artistic language in the post-1990s era. While each artist approaches narrative and politics differently, their practices collectively reflect a shift toward staged and self-reflexive forms of storytelling within moving image art.
Ben-Ner’s work has been recognised with numerous awards, including the Sandberg Prize for Israeli Art from the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, the Givon Prize from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the principal prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and the KunstFilm Biennale Cologne Prize, as well as a DAAD Artists-in-Berlin residency.
His works are held in major public and foundation collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Philadelphia Museum of Art; CRAC Sète; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris / San Francisco; and Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, alongside the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv Museum of Art.