Headlands Center for the Arts

Erica Deeman is a visual artist considering the liminal and transitory spaces in which Black identities are formed. Deeman’s work is interdisciplinary in nature, and she creates in both physical and virtual spaces.

Deeman’s maternal family moved to the United Kingdom as part of the Windrush generation, leaving their farmland in Lesterfields, Jamaica, and eventually settling in Nottingham. She draws upon this journey, her own migration to the US, collective migratory patterns, and memory to create installations and artworks that speak to the condition of becoming and the intimate, spiritual, and ancestral history belonging to her family. 

Deeman received a BA (Hons), Public Relations, degree in 2000 from Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK, and a BFA, Photography degree in 2014 from Academy of Art, San Francisco. She has exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions with Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Archive, Berkeley; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; and Laurence Miller Gallery, New York. She received the 2021 Cadogan Contemporary Art Award, and was a 2019 Artist in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts.