RUTH K. BURKE
  • Work
    • Susurrus
    • In Heaven Love Comes First
    • Ruminant >
      • Keeping Everyone Comfortable, 2017
      • Forever Heifer, 2017
      • Trough, 2016
      • Closer to Closure, 2017
      • We are Flesh, Fat, and Blood, 2016
      • Bargaining Tool (2,000 lbs), 2016
    • Moving Image & Site-Specific >
      • Gift Economy, 2019
      • The Process of Coming and Going in this World, 2018
      • The Social Life of Meat, 2018
      • Quiet, 2018
      • Itchy in the Grass, 2018
      • Boustrophedon, 2017
      • Connected Kingdoms, 2017
      • Emblem of Rural Quiet, 2017
      • Aleph, 2017
      • Window Into, 2017
      • Countering the Bull, 2016
      • Gopi, 2015
    • Horses >
      • Polyrhythms (Fuerst Rendition), 2020
      • Epona, 2018
      • Burgazada Ride, 2016
      • Herd II, 2016
      • Herd, 2015
    • R&D
  • statement
  • about/cv
  • Contact
  • Black Lives Matter
Picture
Susurrus, 2019 (from the Bond series)
Digital Collage, Archival Print on Canvas
8 ft x 10 ft
Images of Susurrus installed at Columbus Cultural Arts Center

​
A Rearing (Square Knot Ties), 2019 
Sisal Baling Twine
Size Variable
More images of Square Knot Ties here
Picture
"Susurrus" 
Installation view

Assorted wool, adhesive, salt block
Picture
Picture
Picture
Exhibition Statement

I could speak to horses first. Then came the rabbits, the dogs, cows, chickens, and goats; the coyotes, warblers, spiders, goldenrod, and the now-absent ash trees.

A language is quietly embedded in the ways animals touch one another. Like humans, other animals create and maintain inter and intraspecies bonds through touch—licking, rubbing, scratching—gestures that generate marks, leave traces, and form conversation of their own. The installation is a confluence of this sensory expression, a syntax in which the individual traces of reciprocity stand as morphemes: building blocks, the smallest meaningful units in this language. Using "sensory-based thinking", as animals do according to Temple Grandin, the nature of tactile gestures is then translated to material: twine, salt, fur. Witnessing these traces, both unassuming and ephemeral in nature, requires patient listening and meditative looking. With beginnings in an ongoing photography series that documents the visual residue of intraspecies bonding, Susurrus ruminates on the humble intimacy within reciprocal interspecies relationships.

© 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
      • Closer to Closure, 2017
      • We are Flesh, Fat, and Blood, 2016
      • Bargaining Tool (2,000 lbs), 2016
    • Moving Image & Site-Specific >
      • Gift Economy, 2019
      • The Process of Coming and Going in this World, 2018
      • The Social Life of Meat, 2018
      • Quiet, 2018
      • Itchy in the Grass, 2018
      • Boustrophedon, 2017
      • Connected Kingdoms, 2017
      • Emblem of Rural Quiet, 2017
      • Aleph, 2017
      • Window Into, 2017
      • Countering the Bull, 2016
      • Gopi, 2015
    • Horses >
      • Polyrhythms (Fuerst Rendition), 2020
      • Epona, 2018
      • Burgazada Ride, 2016
      • Herd II, 2016
      • Herd, 2015
    • R&D
  • statement
  • about/cv
  • Contact
  • Black Lives Matter