Guy Ben-Ner

Guy Ben-Ner (Israel, b. 1969) Stealing Beauty, 2007

Single-channel video (color, sound); 17:40 mins. Henry Art Gallery, gift of William and Ruth True, 2014.296

In Stealing Beauty, Israeli video artist Guy BenNer stages a family drama in the format of mid-century sitcoms in the domestic interiors of IKEA, the ubiquitous Scandinavian home goods store. Filmed covertly at IKEA locations in New York, Berlin, and Tel Aviv, Ben-Ner, his wife, and two children play the part of a fictional family, performing small, domestic dramas in the public space of the iconic big-box store. The story’s central conflict revolves around the son’s theft from a neighbor boy and the daughter’s breaking of curfew. Discussion ensues between father and children around the origins of the term family, notions of private property, inheritance, and exchange, fusing sitcom with theory seminar. The film ends with a manifesto delivered by the two children alone, in which they reject the values imparted on them by their father, declaring: “Property is like a ghost, you cannot possess it without being possessed by it.“