Miriam de Búrca

Miriam de Búrca is a contemporary artist working with a variety of media, including film, video, and installation, and more recently in drawing and glass.

Biography of Miriam de Búrca

Miriam de Búrca was born in 1972 in Munich, Germany. She attended Glasgow School of Art from 1992 to 1996, where she received a BA in Fine Art. Later, from 1998 to 2000, she studied at the University of Ulster in Belfast, obtaining an MA in Fine Art.

In 2010, Miriam de Búrca completed her practice-based PhD at the University of Ulster in Belfast and was commended with an Award of Excellence.

Her other awards and accolades include the Arts Council SIAP Support for Individual Artist (2009), the Arts Council Research Grant (2012), and the Arts Council of Ireland Bursary Award (2018). 

For over twenty years, her work has been exhibited internationally. Recent exhibitions featuring Miriam de Búrca's works include "Miriam De Búrca: Noblesse Oblige" at Cristea Roberts Gallery in London (2024), "Beautiful Apocalypse" at Galway Arts Centre, GIAF in Galway (2024), and  "Talamh agus Teanga" at Museum of Fine Art at Florida State University (2024).

Currently, the artist lives and works in Galway, Ireland.

Miriam de Búrca's Art Style

Her early work engaged with her personal experience of the persisting divisions in Belfast, documenting weeds, termed 'Native Aliens,' that emerged from the ashes of bonfires and derelict sites after conflicts. She also captured the constructed, colonial landscape of the Crom Estate, a former Anglo-Irish estate where she later lived.

With Brexit in mind, she began recording plant life growing directly on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, identifying them by their coordinates rather than botanical names. These drawings highlight the transformation of a place with a fractious history and the conscious effort required to recall and understand its past and present.

Miriam de Búrca's recent drawings focus on burial sites in Ireland known as cillíní, used to bury unbaptized babies and others deemed 'unsuitable' for consecrated ground, a practice that continued until the 1980s. De Búrca examines these phenomena through a post-colonial lens, emulating imperialist methods and aesthetics that simultaneously attract and repel her. Her 'sod' drawings echo botanical studies but push the conversation about land and its significance further by transforming this system of scrutiny into a process of contemplation, remembrance, and recognition.