Over her four-decade career, Ericka Beckman’s playful yet formally demanding films challenge traditional aesthetic, and cultural values, that mix games with fairytales to create hybrids with new rules. Beckman uses play in every sense to shape her message.
Beckman’s work has been shown at festivals, museums, and
galleries around the world. Her one-woman shows include: Kunsthalle
Bern, Switzerland, Le Magasin, Grenoble, France, the Tate Modern,
London, MOCA, Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the
Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum, Washington,D.C., and the Walker Art
Center, Minneapolis. She has been in four Biennials at the Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York. Her works are in the film collection
of the Whitney Museum, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan
Museum, The Walker Art Center, Anthology Film Archives, plus the
British Film Institute, and the Zabludowicz Collection. Amongst the
numerous awards received for her work are: Two grants from the National
Endowment for the Arts, two New York State Council on the Arts grants,
one from Massachusetts Council on the Arts, and a residency from the
Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France.