About the Artist

Becca Kallem is a Washington, D.C.-based artist and educator. She received an MFA in painting from the University of New Hampshire, with a BA in Art and Spanish from the College of William and Mary. She held a Fulbright fellowship in Madrid, Spain. Most recently, her work has been exhibited at the (e)merge Art Fair, Hillyer Art Space, and Heiner Contemporary. She is a resident artist at the Arlington Arts Center in Virginia. She has also held residencies at the Vermont Studio School and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

"Whether working from invention or observation, I am interested in layering, reworking, hiding, and revealing. Each painting becomes a stand-in for a self, an identity that is singular but also changing and multiple. I am interested in identity, perception, and communication. I pair hard-edged symbols with ambiguous, painterly passages to represent how the world exceeds the language and interpretations we apply to it. Yet while imperfect, this construction of meaning is the most vital thing: spanning between discrete things, people, and utterances towards something transcendent."