Benjamin Francis

My work examines how bodily discipline and linguistic correction shape our perceptions of right and wrong. As a dyslexic Dutch-Surinamese artist, my lived experience of constant correction underpins my practice. I investigate how language, hygiene, and bodily control have historically served as tools of conformity, especially within colonial, educational, and

institutional spaces.

Through installations, videos, and performances, I create site-specic environments like bathrooms, classrooms, autopsy rooms where care becomes coercion. Projects like Am I, an object use satire to question authorship and originality within death rituals, while The Smell of Boundaries confronts cleanliness as a ritual of separation.

My work stages environments of discomfort and repetition to uncover the hidden power structures that shape how we learn to distinguish right from wrong. By foregrounding linguistic errors, bodily mess, and systemic rigidity, my practice challenges dominant binaries and asks: Who decides what is correct and what is excluded in the process?