A.K. Burns is an interdisciplinary artist and educator, working at the nexus of language and materiality. The process of mattering (both material and meaning) is set in relief against that which is prescribed to not matter: redacted histories, waste and marginalized experiences. Burns utilizes sculpture, video, sound, installation, writing and performance—troubling systems that assign and maintain these hierarchies with criticality and humor.
A.K. Burns has recently exhibited a solo survey exhibition in 2023 at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio and currently at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA. Additionally, Burns has exhibited internationally including Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; MMK Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt, Germany; FRONT International: The Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH; and The Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA. Burns was awarded the 2023 Berlin Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin; a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship; an American Academy of Arts and Letters 2021 Art Purchase Program; a 2018 NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Interdisciplinary Art; a 2016 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University; and a 2015 Creative Capital Foundation Visual Arts Award. A frequent collaborator; Burns was a founding member of W.A.G.E (Working Artists in the Greater Economy) in 2008—an artists’ advocacy group that remains active as a non-profit certification organization for Arts Institutions nationally. A.K. Burns is an Associate Professor and MFA Co-Director at Hunter College, Department of Art & Art History. Burns is currently represented by Michel Rein Gallery, Paris/Brussels, and Video Data Bank, Chicago.
*A.K. Burns is gender non-conforming and has no preferred pronoun.*
CONTACT: studio@akburns.net