Miriam de Búrca is a visual artist who works with a range of media such as drawing, film, text, photography, collage, etching, sound, and installation. Her practice is forensic in nature; she homes in, dissects and studies her subjects in minute detail. She begins with a period of intense enquiry and research, followed by a period of searching, recording and gathering, the results of which she then takes back to her studio where the final renderings are produced and then sent back out into the world. Thematically, she likes to interrogate contemporary manifestations of political and social projects carried out by patriarchal and colonial systems, examining her subjects through a feminist, ecological and decolonial lens. By mimicking imperialist knowledge-gathering methods and aesthetics, she ultimately seeks to capsize the power dynamic by turning the scrutiny back on the scrutinisers. De Búrca completed a BFA (1996) at Glasgow School of Art, and an MFA (2000) and PhD (Award of Excellence 2010) at Ulster University Belfast. Her work is exhibited nationally and internationally. She is represented by Cristea Roberts Gallery, London and has works in the collections of Arts Council of Northern Ireland; Golden Thread Art Gallery; Arts Council of Ireland; University Galway; Trinity College Dublin; Glucksman Gallery, Cork; the British Museum; Mead Gallery, Coventry; Katrin Bellinger Collection. Her work has been featured in Phaidon’s Vitamin D3: Today’s Best in Contemporary Drawing, 2021; Irish Art 1920–2020: Perspectives on a Century of Change, eds. Yvonne Scott and Catherine Marshall, 2022; Landscape and Environment in Contemporary Irish Art, ed. Yvonne Scott, 2023 and The Story of Drawing: An Alternative History of Art, ed. Susan Owens, Yale University Press, 2024.

She lives and works in Galway, west of Ireland.