In Memoriam: Teresa Burga (1935-2021) | Leonardo/ISAST

In Memoriam: Teresa Burga (1935-2021)

By José-Carlos Mariátegui

by Elisa Arca and José-Carlos Mariátegui

Teresa Burga was born in 1935 in the Amazonian city of Iquitos. Burga has pioneered conceptual art since the sixties, contributing to explore issues related to media, information and politics. In 1955 she started studies of architecture at the National University of Engineering. Two years later, in 1957, she joined the School of Art at the Catholic University of Peru. Along with other six young artists, Burga, initiated themselves the “Arte Nuevo” group (1966–1968), which introduced neo avant-garde trends in Peru, including Pop Art, Op Art, ephemeral environments and early forms of Conceptual Art. In 1968, she started a Master’s degree in Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where she graduated in 1970. The SAIC’s study program allowed her to experiment with a range of materials and techniques and conceive of several conceptual projects, such as Work that Disappears When the Spectator Tries to Approach It (1970) and Sail Boat that Permits to Compute Its Disintegration When Placed in the Water (1969).

Burga has resorted to technology based on organizing information into complex mind maps and structures. In her works, Burga anticipated the massive use of information processing and analysis tools for studying personal data. Installation works such as Self-portrait. Structure. Report. 9.6.1972 (1972) and Profile of the Peruvian woman (1980–1981, along with Marie-France Cathelat) were based on collected personal (blood tests and other medical diagnostic data) and collective data (census), respectively. Subsequently, Burga worked for the Government of Peru in developing information systems that laid down the foundations for creating one of the first computer systems for a government entity in Peru. Interestingly enough, the politics of some of those computerized systems were already present in Burga’s artistic explorations associated with representation and control mechanisms through the organization and management of personal information. 

Until a decade ago, Burga was a relatively unstudied artist. However, she gained international prominence after a retrospective of her seminal multimedia and information-based works was presented in 2010 at the Peruvian – North American Cultural Institute in Lima, and at the Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart in 2011, and at major international venues such as the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011) and the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), followed by recent retrospectives in Buenos Aires (2015), Gent (2018) and Zurich (2018). Her Archive is housed by the Lima Art Museum (MALI).