About

Hi, I'm Benny Anov

Benny Anov is an artist and professor of war studies who was trained as a mathematician and photographer. Anov’s projects of words and visuals focus on archiving memory and chronicling the geometry of ecological forms. Both facets of her work are preoccupied with minute visual recordkeeping – be it to collect reminders of patches of lichen or to document the detailed brickwork of a monument. Among other venues, her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Carrefour des arts in Metz, France, the Houston Center for Photography, the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago, the Maloof Gallery in Atlanta, the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts in Providence, and AS220, also in Providence.

The textual is an appendage to the visual in Anov’s work. When exhibited, her photography is captioned with blocks of text, what she calls "over-captions." These provide an oversaturation of explanation: sometimes they spit a flurry of technical detail at the viewer, at other times they delineate extended, overlapping histories, at other times still they showcase hard, concrete feelings butting heads at length.

And yet, we bring interpretive faculties to all experiences – no matter how hard I might try to compose your viewing experience of my work, no matter how hard I might try to convince you of the fact that I'm "so over captions."

Like all endeavors to exert control – over frames and framing, perspectives and narrative – Anov’s attempt to tell you what you are seeing breaks down. Her work is a call to engage: remember your own histories and the lives that you yourself lost, your changing landscape and land, the grief that you don’t want to remember.

Anov works predominately in English and in French - but in other languages too sometimes. She spends most of her time thinking about migration/movement/mobility, the relationship between image and text, and the slippery spaces between languages, cultures, and borders (of which she is a product). She shoots with a Leica M11, a Nikon FM, and an iPhone 7. And when she's not working, she's trying to find (and create) concepts of home.