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Teresa Burga
Born in 1935 in Iquitos Peru / Lives in Lima, Peru

Adriano Pedrosa (AP): What is your background?

Teresa Burga (TB): I took two years of architecture and then enrolled in visual arts at Universidad Católica, in Lima, graduating in 1964. In 1968 I went to Chicago, earning my MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1972.

AP: When did you make Autorretrato, and what was the initial idea of that artwork?

TB: I went to Germany after Chicago, then returned to Peru and exhibited Autorretrato at the Instituto de Cultura Peruana Norte-Americano, during the time of President Velasco. The idea was to present a self-portrait. I asked some physician friends at the naval hospital to sample my blood and take an electrocardiogram, recording my heart. Then I took the photos. They did it all in just one day, June 9, 1972. At the end of the day, I leaned against the wall and traced the outline of my body on paper, took the measurements of my face, and wrote on the photographs. I finished the work at 5 a.m.

AP: The work is divided into different parts. What are they?

TB: Autorretrato is divided into three categories: “formless face structure,” “formless heart structure,” and “formless blood structure.”

AP: It is hardly a romantic or subjective work, although you are working with the heart and the blood.

TB: It seemed like an idea very close to myself. But entirely without feeling. It’s totally impersonal. That’s what has always guided me, avoiding subjectivity as much as possible. It comes to me from Duchamp’s ideas. For example, I never really choose the color.

AP: Felix Gonzalez-Torres has a series called “Untitled” (Bloodwork— Steady Decline) and “Untitled” (T-Cell Count) that can be related to your work.

TB: Was he dying?

AP: Yes, he had AIDS.

TB: Very interesting.

AP: What was the meaning of making a portrait like that of a woman, here in Lima, at that moment?

TB: That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that artists were making “Peruvian art” because of the military government—figurative things, little dolls.

AP: Very conservative. And there was no conceptual art in Lima then?

TB: No. The conceptual artists were in exile.

AP: The profile, which in Autorretrato is traced on paper, reappears in Perfil de la mujer peruana (Profile of the Peruvian Woman), your last work, a book published in 1981.

TB: Yes. For that work we had an incredible collaboration from the Universidad del Pacífico, helping with the research.

AP: In the first part there are various chapters: affective, social, educational, cultural, linguistic, religious, labor and professional, economic, political, social, legal, and psychological profiles. The cover shows a uterus, which indicates a concern with fertility, sexuality. Was the feminist issue a concern of this work?

TB: You never know where your concern will lead.

AP: When and why did you stop working as an artist?

TB: I worked until 1981. It’s hard to believe, but it was after President Belaúnde came in, in 1980, after the military government. Everything seemed frivolous to me.