Teresa Burga

Teresa Burga’s later series Dibujos viendo mal purposefully, and playfully, present viewers with bright, faux naive images of life from the artist’s native Peru. These compositions, deliberately rendered in a badly drawn style—complete with wonky perspective and poorly rendered figures—reveal the artist’s belief that artistic deskilling is an inherently decolonial gesture, one which refutes the imperialist art education she received at the Catholic University in Peru. Quietly subversive in their presentation, these enigmatic images of men and women also privilege information about the process of their making over the individuals they depict. Every drawing's title from the series records the times of it creation and completion. Inscribing the dates and time spent on each composition—tracking her hours as if clocking in and out of a job—Burga positions artistic production simply as another form of labor.