Special Project - Artist Tribute: Teresa Burga

This section honors the outstanding Peruvian artist Teresa Burga (1935-2021), a pioneer of conceptual and multimedia art. Known for her experimental approach, Burga challenged the norms of contemporary art from the 1960s, exploring pop aesthetics, mass culture, and the intersection of gender. Throughout her career, she combined painting, sculpture, installation, and cybernetic media, deeply influencing art in Peru and worldwide. This Special Project seeks to revive her legacy and highlight her contribution to the global art scene, especially after her return to the scene in the 2000s.

Teresa Burga (Iquitos, 1935 – Lima, 2021) was a conceptual and multimedia artist. From 1957 to 1965, she studied painting at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Burga held her first solo exhibition, Lima Imaginada, in 1965 at the Cultura y Libertad Gallery in Lima. From 1966 to 1968, she was a member of the Arte Nuevo group, where they promoted experimental art forms. Her work during this period embraced pop aesthetics, reflecting on mass culture, commercial images, domestic space, and gender.

In 1968, Burga enrolled in a multidisciplinary program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts in 1970. There, she became actively involved in conceptual art, developing ambitious projects that blended multimedia and cybernetic languages. Her most important exhibitions of the decade include Autorretrato. Estructura. Informe (9.6.1972) and Cuatro mensajes (1974). In 1980 and 1981, together with French psychologist Marie-France Cathelat, she developed the exhibition and book Perfil de la mujer peruana (1981).

After this experience, Burga withdrew from the art scene for over two decades due to the lack of a positive reception for her experimental approaches. Starting in 2007, her early experimental work was rediscovered through exhibitions such as La persistencia de lo efímero. Orígenes del no-objetualismo peruano: ambientaciones / happenings / arte conceptual (1965-1975), curated by Miguel A. López and Emilio Tarazona. Since then, the artist produced works combining drawing, sculpture, and installation. Her work is part of the collections of the Museo de Arte de Lima, Museo de Arte Colonial, Migros Museum, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano in Buenos Aires, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp, the Sammlung Verbund Collection in Vienna, among others.