Marie José Burki

Marie José Burki was born in Biel, Switzerland.
1981 she began studying French Literature and History at the University of Geneva. From 1983, she simultaneously attended the Ecole supérieure d’art visuel and studied with Silvie and Cherif Defraoui. She completed her university studies in 1988 with a dissertation on Raymond Roussel. In 1989 she spent several months in Paris at the Citée des arts . In 1990 she lived in New York, working at the the PS1 Studio Program .
She lived in Paris and Geneva after her return to Europe. She participated in Jan Hoet’s documenta IX in 1992.
Marie José Burki has lived and worked in Brussels since 1993.
She has been a visiting artist at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam several times since 1994. Her first major solo exhibition took place at Kunsthalle Basel in 1995.
Her daughter Svetlana was born in 1996.
Between 1998 and 1999 she had a series of solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Bern, Kunstverien in Bonn, Camden Arts Center in London and Kunstverein in Stuttgart. Her first solo exhibition in Paris took place at Galerie Nelson in 1997. This was followed by the first solo exhibition in New York at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in 1998.
In response to an initiative by Diane Shamash and Minetta Brook, she began developping a film and audio project for public space in New York in 1997. The presentation followed in May 2001.
Burki directed the postgraduate program at the Ecole nationale des beaux arts de Lyon from 2000 to 2002. Her first solo exhibition at a belgian museum took place at Musée des arts contemporains, Grand Hornu, in 2003.
Marie José Burki has participated in numerous group exhibitions, for example, at Museum Folkwang in Essen and at Musem van Hedendaagse Kunst (Muhka)in Antwerpen.
From 2003 To 2009, she hold a Professorship At The Hochschule Für Bildende Künste In Hamburg. She As held Professorship At the Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux arts in Paris since 2009.
Marie José Burki lives in Brussel and Paris.