10 / Febrero / 2019

2019 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

29.7 x 21.1 cm

Teresa Burga

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In her new series titled Ninas Peruanas Cusquenas , Teresa Burga depicts young indigenous women from Peru’s Andean region, dressed in traditional garments. Sourcing imagery from the internet, the drawings recall an untitled series of drawings from 1974, in which Burga selected images of women at random from various print media, and then rendered the images on paper. Those drawings, like the newer ones, suggest the perils of images without context––how assumptions are made, stereotypes are formed, and knowledge is gathered. In 1974, Burga recreated the glossy images of the hypersexualized, Eurocentric models she found predominantly featured in magazines. In Ninas Peruanas Cusquenas , boldly saturated depictions of indigenous women in traditional dress are also presented without context. Instead, Burga offers information about the process of making the drawing itself––each drawing’s title references the date of its completion. Additionally, with the mechanical distance of someone who spent a large part of her career working methodically with data, statistics, and information systems, in the margins of the drawings Burga inscribes the dates and time spent on each work–– tracking her hours as if clocking in and out of a job. Formally distinct from Burga’s conceptual work of past decades, these drawings position artistic production as a type of labor––recalling her installation works from the 1970s.

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A pioneer of Latin American Conceptualism, since the 1960s, Teresa Burga has made works that encompass drawing, painting, sculpture, and conceptual structures that support the display of analytical data and experimental methodologies. Burga studied at the School of Art of the Catholic University of Peru in Lima and later at the Art Institute of Chicago thanks to a Fulbright Scholarship. In 1966 Burga formed part of the Arte Nuevo group, a collective of artists interested in advancing genres of Pop, Minimalism, Op Art, and happenings and contributing vastly to the avant-garde in Peru. During her time in Chicago, Burga made works that questioned traditional artistic authorship, instead of prioritizing conceptual prompts. Meant to be produced and replicated by anyone via highly-detailed schematic diagrams, her boldly-saturated Prismas sculptures, for example, embody both Pop and commercial aesthetics with colorful geometric forms. In other works, like Pictures with a Limited Time (1970) and Work That Disappears When the Spectator Tries to Approach It (1970), Burga invented immersive situations where spectators must activate the environment through the use of their own bodies. In recent drawings, Burga examines cultural customs and scenes of contemporary life in Peru and beyond.

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Colors:

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• autochthonal.s.01
• labor.n.02
• tradition.n.01
• fashion.n.03
• medium.n.01