Jonas N.T. Becker

Jonas Becker was born in Morgantown, West Virginia, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She received an MFA in Studio Art with an emphasis in Visual Studies from the University of California, Irvine in 2010 and a BA in Architecture from Smith College in 2004.

Becker's images and video installations actualize the imaginary space between what can be seen and what we suspect, hope, or believe is real. Her images employ the neutral language of documentary to give truth-like authority to that which can’t be documented: visual residues of trauma, time suspended in the moment before the new year, or alternate realities not yet in existence. Through her manipulation of camera, editing and projection, Becker constructs vantages that transcend human vision. She employs still or looped video images and montages video frames to create a 360 degree perspective, suspending the viewer in mythologically constructed moments. Becker is currently exploring constructed ideas of time in a video project about messianic conjectures, from Noah’s Arc to the popularized 2012 End of Days, as she interrogates the broader political role of the artist in cultural production and memory.

Becker’s work has been exhibited internationally, most recently at LAXART, Durden and Ray, Monongalia Art Center, and at Lyceum Gallery in an exhibition curated by Charlotte Cotton. Becker teaches photography to both youth and university-level students, most recently at the University of California, Irvine, the HeArt Project and the Art Institute. She also founded and directs the Mobile Pinhole Project, an organization that uses a giant, mobile pinhole camera to bring interactive photography workshops to youth in neighborhoods across Los Angeles. Her recent grants and fellowships include the Center for Global Peace Studies project grant, the Medici Scholars grant, the Claire Trevor travel award and the Six Points Fellowship.