Teresa Burga

"Burga was born in 1935 in the port city of Iquitos, but moved as a child to Lima with her parents. After initially training as an architect, in 1966 she became one of six Lima-based artists who formed Grupo Arte Nuevo, a collective that wanted to propel the contemporary movements of Pop, Minimalism, Op Art, and happenings in Peru. In 1968, she travelled to the US on a Fulbright scholarship where she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago for two years, receiving her MFA in 1970. Throughout this time, Burga further pushed the conceptual elements of her work and questioned conventional notions of artistic authorship by creating objects that could be replicated by anyone through detailed schematics that she made. In 1971, she returned to Peru, which was then under the authoritarian rule of Juan Velasco Alvarado. Living under a regime unfavorable to conceptual art, Burga procured a job designing solutions to enhance administrative efficiency in digital information systems for Peru’s General Customs Office, a position she held for 30 years, and during which her artistic career drifted into obscurity.(...) Like many women artists of her generation, while recognition of her work came late, it quickly grew. (...) A 2010 solo exhibition at the Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano in Lima—her first solo show in 30 years—and it was quickly followed by over a dozen exhibitions around the world in the decade since. (...) With a massive resurgence in critical attention, Burga returned to working across a number of mediums, including sculpture, drawing, and installation, emphasising and prizing the conceptual framework of each individual project above all else. Her early investigations into societal roles in Peru continued to resonate and were included in her 2017 show at Sculpture Center in New York some 50 years after their creation, where had equal footing alongside newer works." Art Newspaper on death of Teresa Burga (https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/teresa-burga-trailblazing-peruvian-conceptualist-artist-has-died-aged-86?utm_source=The%20Art%20Newspaper%20Newsletters)