Upper Galleries
September 7, 2024 – May 4, 2025
A.K. Burns (b. 1975, Capitola, CA; based in Stone Ridge, New York) explores feminist and queer perspectives through a diverse range of mediums including video, sculpture, and installations. The Henry exhibition delves into the intersections of landscapes, human bodies, and water across Burns’s art, particularly focusing on the Negative Space series (2015-23).
Negative Space draws inspiration from science fiction, crafting a narrative that challenges societal norms and power dynamics. This non-linear allegory reflects on environmental vulnerability, marginalized communities, and their relationships with place. The concept of “negative space” or the void serves as a central motif, symbolizing a fertile ground for upending established hierarchies, restructuring social relationships, and fostering agency. Burns describes this as an open and ever-evolving space where possibilities for transformation emerge from traditionally marginalized perspectives.
“What is compelling about negative space is that it is undefined and an open set of possibilities. The possibility of becoming is an ever-shifting and vital position, and thereby is a form of agency that emerges from a ‘subordinate’ position.” A.K. Burns
At the Henry exhibition, viewers encounter three video installations from the Negative Space universe: Living Room (2017), Leave No Trace (2019), and What is Perverse is Liquid (2023). Visually and sonically layered, each of these installations is an immersive environment that features a recurring cast of characters performed by members of Burns’s queer community.
Throughout the exhibition, the distinction between animate and inanimate entities blur. Human bodies, alongside elements like water and land, coalesce into a dynamic, interconnected presence. The accompanying photography, collage, and sculptures deepen these themes, exploring tensions between subjugation and agency. They highlight how transformation can unfold across different narrative, historical, and geological scales.
Visitor Advisory: Please note that the video works in this exhibition contain naked bodies, blood, curse words, flashing lights, and insects.
Artist Bio
A.K. Burns is an interdisciplinary artist and associate professor in the Department of Art at Hunter College, City University of New York. Using video, installation, sculpture, drawing, and collaboration and working at the nexus of language and materiality, she/they trouble systems that assign value and explore their sociopolitical embodiment. Burns has exhibited internationally, including at 2018’s FRONT International, Cleveland, Ohio; the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Julia Stoschek Foundation, Dusseldorf, Germany; MMK Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; New Museum, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, Oregon; and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio. She/they was a founding member of W.A.G.E. (Working Artists in the Greater Economy), a nonprofit artists’ advocacy group. Community Action Center (2010), a video made in collaboration with A.L. Steiner, which re-imagines pornographic cinema for queer womxn, and trans and nonbinary bodies, has screened internationally, including the Tate, London; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Burns is a 2023 Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin; a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow; a 2016 Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and a 2015 Creative Capital Foundation Visual Arts Award Recipient.