RUTH K. BURKE
  • Work
    • Susurrus
    • In Heaven Love Comes First
    • Ruminant >
      • Keeping Everyone Comfortable, 2017
      • Forever Heifer, 2017
      • Trough, 2016
      • We are Flesh, Fat, and Blood, 2016
      • Closer to Closure, 2017
      • Bargaining Tool (2,000 lbs), 2016
    • Moving Image & Site-Specific >
      • Gift Economy, 2019
      • The Process of Coming and Going in this World, 2018
      • Quiet, 2018
      • Emblem of Rural Quiet, 2017
      • Connected Kingdoms, 2017
      • Boustrophedon, 2017
      • The Social Life of Meat, 2018
      • Itchy in the Grass, 2018
      • Gopi, 2015
      • Countering the Bull, 2016
      • Aleph, 2017
      • Window Into, 2017
    • Horses >
      • Herd, 2015
      • Herd II, 2016
      • Burgazada Ride, 2016
      • Epona, 2018
    • R&D
  • statement
  • about/cv
  • Contact
  • Black Lives Matter
I make work about interspecies kinship as specific to small scale farming in the Midwestern United States. In practice, I combine scholarly and field research, collaboration, performance, video, and sound, at the site of a small-scale family farm. My work is socially-engaged and the aesthetics vary from social to fine art; the work spans a variety of media, from site-specific installation and sculpture to live performance. Pieces occur and are shown in contexts ranging from pastures to galleries; the setting of a small family farm emerges as a nuanced research site, at times complicated and others, bucolic. 

My practice is primarily informed by theories and practices in contemporary art and human-animal studies. Kinship is contextualized in an anthropological sense; as a transmutable term that describes a spectrum of nurturing to exploitative bonds in a variety of situational contexts. My formative years were spent in barns, riding horses, and at summer-long riding camps; my research is informed by this lived experience. This practice extends a lifelong multispecies education through continued participation in farm work, as an equestrian, and through the development of long-term relationships with human and nonhuman collaborators.
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© COPYRIGHT RUTH K BURKE STUDIOS. 2020
​ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Work
    • Susurrus
    • In Heaven Love Comes First
    • Ruminant >
      • Keeping Everyone Comfortable, 2017
      • Forever Heifer, 2017
      • Trough, 2016
      • We are Flesh, Fat, and Blood, 2016
      • Closer to Closure, 2017
      • Bargaining Tool (2,000 lbs), 2016
    • Moving Image & Site-Specific >
      • Gift Economy, 2019
      • The Process of Coming and Going in this World, 2018
      • Quiet, 2018
      • Emblem of Rural Quiet, 2017
      • Connected Kingdoms, 2017
      • Boustrophedon, 2017
      • The Social Life of Meat, 2018
      • Itchy in the Grass, 2018
      • Gopi, 2015
      • Countering the Bull, 2016
      • Aleph, 2017
      • Window Into, 2017
    • Horses >
      • Herd, 2015
      • Herd II, 2016
      • Burgazada Ride, 2016
      • Epona, 2018
    • R&D
  • statement
  • about/cv
  • Contact
  • Black Lives Matter