Ben Hagari
Associate Professor of Foundation
Ben Hagari was born and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel. His practice crosses film, video, installation, animation, photography, and sculpture to create tragic comedies that unfold in absurdist environments. Hagari explores how communication takes place across human, nonhuman, and technological boundaries, drawing on multidisciplinary research in theater, art history, and the history of media technology.
His work has been presented in biennials, museums, galleries, and film festivals across the United States, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Exhibitions and screenings include: SculptureCenter and the High Line, New York; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham; Whitechapel Gallery, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Kraków; Kunst im Tunnel, Düsseldorf; Flora Ars+Natura, Bogotá; Fundación CALOSA, Mexico; Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art; the Gutman Museum; Herzliya Museum; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
His awards and fellowships include a 2024 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship; a New York State Council on the Arts Grant (NYSCA); the Chami Fruchter Video Prize, awarded by the Rose Art Museum and Tel Aviv Museum of Art; an Artis Exhibitions Grant; the RolfsPartner Award, KIT, Düsseldorf; and the Fund for Video and Experimental Cinema, The Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv.
Hagari received his MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University and his B.Ed.F.A. from HaMidrasha Faculty of Arts at Beit Berl College, Israel. Before joining the Kansas City Art Institute, he taught at HaMidrasha Faculty of Arts, Columbia University School of the Arts, the School of Visual Arts in New York, and Yale School of Art.