Marie José Burki

Marie–José Burki (born 1961) is a Swiss visual artist and educator. She is best known for video art, but also has worked in photography, screen printing, sculpture, and installation art. Her work is interested in exploring the interaction between words and images, the passing of time, and the narrative story. Burki teaches at Beaux-Arts de Paris. She lives between Brussels and Paris.

Biography Marie José Burki was born on 11 January 1961 in Biel. In 1993, Burki was awarded the Manor Cultural Prize for the Canton of Geneva. Burki's first major solo exhibition took place in 1995 at the Kunsthalle Basel. Her first solo exhibition in the United States was at Lehman Maupin gallery in 1998; which featured the video installation of Exposure: Dawn, 1997.

She taught art at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon.

Artwork Her early video art work, Celui qui a vu passer les éléphants blancs (English: He Who Saw the White Elephants Pass By) (1985, runtime: 11 minutes) won film festival awards, and is held in video collection libraries (Kunsthaus Zürich; and Centre pour l'Image Contemporaine, Saint-Gervais, Geneva).

Her large scale, multi-channel video work on different walls, Exposure: Dawn (1997, runtime: approx. 20 minutes), features storefront prostitutes in a red-light district with cars passing and reflections of light. Burki's single channel video, Chicken (2000, runtime: 6 minutes), features a chef preparing a dead chicken for a meal.