Ann Burke Daly

Ann Burke Daly (born 1961) is an American artist whose works include installation, performance, sculptures, photographs, video and sound projects, writings, and books. Much of her art deals with the afterlife of objects and events, as well as the repetitiveness of daily life, showing how memory and perceptions can be shaped.

She addresses the vagaries of memory and perception through using a task-based performance and the repetition of quotidian action to create collections of evidence.

Education and academic career Daly received her MFA in painting from Yale School of Art (1988–1990) and is a post-graduate fellow of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Independent Study Program (1993–1994). She attended the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art as an undergraduate (1987). Daly was a Visiting assistant professor at the City University of New York (2013–2015). In Decoration and Detection (1997) from the Performing Arts Journal by George Baker, Baker observes the scenes and speculates the Oedipal narrative within the room's decorations, leaving no details out. He states the decorative objects in the video are a "repetitive experience of the indexical inscription." In the same year as Baker's review, The Mourning After Exhibition Catalog (1997) includes an essay by Susette Min addressing two installations from the same series. The Automaton Olympia Throws Her Voice "projects fragments of decorative details and furnishings" in two rooms. Still, in 1997, Baker wrote another review of the series focusing on one installation work, the Stereoscopic Vision, in his Narrative Urge article. The Stereoscopic Vision (1996) is an audio recording that allows one person to listen to Daly's voice while facing outlines of absent photographs traced against a wall. The recording had "differing durations, creating endless and contradictory permutations of potential descriptions," leaving interpretation to the listener. The following year, J.P. Nilsson reviewed the Narrative Urge Exhibition curated by Catsou Roberts in ArtPress Magazine (1998), which included a picture of Daly's Stereoscopic Vision installation.

Anti-monuments In 2001, Daly went to France to create her Anti-Monuments, photographing wrapped statues in the gardens of the Versailles. In 2002, Cabinet Magazine included two statue photographs from Daly's Anti-Monuments (Versailles) and a short review. Cabinet Magazine says the photographs address the “psychological and social space of the garden and landscape architecture.”

Script: Franco is Still Dead Two Years later, after working at the City University of New York and becoming a visiting artist, Daly collaborated with Álvaro Marcos, a Spanish DIY scene musician and writer, to work on Script: Franco is Still Dead. It is a multi-channel video and sound installation covering the rise of modern Democracy in Spain, the past dictatorship, and the civil war. Months later, after the completion of the project, Matthew McCardwell interviewed Daly and Marcos to discuss their project. One of the questions McCardwell asks them is what viewers will see when going into the installation. Daly says there would be "four large projections, and four sources of sound, which will become immersive." Another question from McCardwell is how the project fits with the second wave of resolutions. The projections and sound help viewers understand Spain's past as Daly wants to bring light to "what is silenced and hidden in plain sight."

Awards

1992, Art Matters Foundation Fellowship 2002, Kohler Arts- Industry award 2016, Puffin Foundation Arts Grants 2016 and 2017, Studios of Mass MoCA 2018, Artist Residency in Visual Arts from Yaddo 2023, Puffin Foundation Arts Grants 2024, New York State Council on the Arts Grant