— born in 1956 in Nikšić, Montenegro, where she completed her Pedagogical Academy. She graduated in graphic arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, under Professor Dževad Hozo, in 1981. She specialized at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague under Professor Ladislav Čepelak (1982–1983). She completed her Master’s studies in 1983 at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, under Professor Branko Miljuš. She has conducted study stays in Paris at the Cité Internationale des Arts, as well as in Greece, Czechoslovakia, Germany, France, Italy, the USA, Korea, and Egypt. From 1985 to 1987, she was a lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy in Nikšić, Department of Fine Arts, teaching Drawing. From 1988 she worked at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cetinje, and, since 2002, as a full professor. She served two terms as head of the Department of Graphic Arts. She has held forty solo exhibitions in Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Macedonia, South Korea, France, the United States, and other countries. She has participated in over 250 group exhibitions both in Montenegro and internationally. She has received 27 awards for graphic arts and drawing, and works are held in numerous significant museums, galleries, and cultural institutions in Montenegro and abroad. She has been a member of ULUCG (Association of Fine Artists of Montenegro) since 1981. Since 2011, she has held the status of an eminent cultural creator of Montenegro. She was elected an associate member of the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts (CANU) in 2003 and a full member in 2008. She has been a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Salzburg (EASA) since 2019. She is the president of the Committee for Fine Arts at MASA.

My art is a story about life, humanity, existence, my roots, and an unbreakable bond with nature. Through printmaking, drawing, photography, painting, and installation, I explore the materiality and immateriality of the earth—soil, natural elements, organic matter, stone. These elements act as sediments of memory, carrying archetypal power that transcends time and serves as the foundation for my artistic and metaphysical inquiries.

At the core of my creative mentality lies a meditative focus, leading to a reduction of visual means—primarily line, pared to its essence yet retaining gestural expression and spontaneity. My work seeks balance and simplicity by aligning my inner dynamics and energy with those of nature. Time and space in this process are not fixed categories; they condense, intertwine, and merge. I do not aim to negate time but to explore its fluidity and cyclicality, where past, present, and future converge in perpetual transformation.

Space in my work is not static—it is an active field where relations and rhythms of nature unfold. Emptiness holds equal significance to material form, which I strive to reduce to a sign, freeing it from excessive descriptiveness. This is almost always preceded by drawing, a fundamental mode of expression for me, as thought must be recorded immediately. Simultaneously, emptiness remains present as the unrecorded, as a liminal space emerging between physical presence and contemplative inner worlds, a tension that continually preoccupies me.
From my earliest creative beginnings, I have been fascinated by natural materials and their transposition into art. Returning to the primal is a “sacred” task and a contribution to ecological purity. Instead of synthetic materials, I use soot, sand, wine, rust, earth, water, and ash—elements that operate in the interstices of time and reflect cycles of transformation. A crucial aspect of my practice is experimenting with technical and technological methods of employing these materials. For me, creating art is the most direct encounter with the Self. The trace I leave, either through material, object, or my own body, has always been central to my expression. For me, art is life, and life is art. During my exploration of the graphic potential of wine and winemaking residues (sediment) in several monotype series (Process, Wine and Fermentation1, and Wine and Time (2004–2009)2, I (ritually) used my own feet and hands as matrices—elemental visual and symbolic forms present even in my earliest prints and drawings. My graphic experiments also focused on expressing the structures and surfaces of household objects from my family home and a repurposed studio (stone thresholds, tripods, tables, rusted tools: knives, sheep shears, shovels, hoes, discarded nails). Through primary imprints (with a spoon) on paper and symbolic “removal of rust” from surfaces evoking communal labor and meals—and the “entire backdrop of lived daily rituals”—unique transfigured portraits emerged: tactile faces of objects, a kind of graphic inventory of archetypes (monotypes from the cycles Duration34 and Removing Rust, 2009–20145 ). The authenticity of the process becomes “visible” only when considering the verso of the print, the inner eye of the impression, revealing the interdependent relationship between front and back, the “beyond,” where objects from material reality translate into the reality of art and spirit, compelling the viewer to (re)movement.

The antonymic relationship between front and back—as a wondrous meeting point of visible and invisible, past and present, external and internal, the artist’s being and the essence of art—serves as the leitmotif and thread in my extensive series of frottages and drawings Imprint of Time – Stećci in Montenegro (2015–2019)678. The project is based on expressing the surface of stećci9 stones through frottage on thin canvas, part of my multilayered and polysemous artistic quest. It is a subtle artistic act where, through touch and drawing with graphite or pressed charcoal in layers on canvas, the “face” of the stećci is traced/fixed, evoking ancient civilizations’ death mask rituals. The project can also be viewed as an expression of my cultural concern for the future of stećci. I named this new graphic process archeography—a sublimation of prior graphic research and my deep inner engagement with these ancient monuments. Encountering stećci was a dramatic encounter in which the artist confronts with the heritage, revives the legacy and answers its call to embody new forms and meanings via the creative process.

The symbolism of stećci is abstracted: rather than deciphering their carvings (a visual language now foreign to us), these works strip imagery of its initial meaning, returning it in abstract form as visuality with untapped potential. The project and exhibition Imprint of Time – Stećci in Montenegro synthesizes my identity as an artist, as it returns me to the primal space of childhood, intertwining personal history with the unique heritage of this region.

In the context of heritage, I previously developed the extensive project Churches and Monasteries of the Skadar Lake Basin (CANU, 2012), creating frottages and drawings of details from sacred architecture, inventory fragments, inscriptions, and more—graphic etudes recorded in grid notebooks and permanent traces of the artist’s presence. Later, during a 2013 residency at Albrecht Dürer’s house-museum in Nuremberg, I documented spatial traces through drawings, woodcuts, monotype frottages, and diary sketches (details of Dürer’s wooden press, shoemaker’s lamps, lintels, architectural beams…), culminating in the project Artist, Time, and Space, the unique imprint of the site’s elusive genius loci.

At its essence, my work is a practice of listening—to the land, silence, the interplay of form and emptiness. It does not seek to fix meaning but to open paths for contemplation. By reducing materials to elemental forms and dismantling linear perceptions of time, I explore the vital forces of life and the delicate balance that sustains all.

Through art, I strive to harmonize the meditative and the engaged, silence and the necessary response to the challenges of our time (Black Dot10, Between East and West1112). It is a call to step beyond measurable time into a space where everything intertwines—where existence is defined not by beginning or end but by the ceaseless cycle of becoming and responsibility to the world around us.

Text written in collaboration with Ana Ivanović.


1Image: Anka Burić, From the Wine and Time Cycle. Courtesy of the artist.

2Image: Anka Burić, Process, 2005, monotype, 60x806cm. Courtesy of the artist.

3Image: Anka Burić, From the Duration Cycle, 2009, monotype, 29x23cm. Courtesy of the artist.

4Image: Anka Burić, From the Duration Cycle, 2009, monotype. Courtesy of the artist.

5Image: Anka Burić, Duration From Removing Rust Cycle, 2011, monotype, 29x23cm. Courtesy of the artist.

6Image: Anka Burić, Imprint of Time – Stećci in Montenegro, 2018, frottage archeography, 147x215cm, site: Nikšić. Courtesy of Lazar Pejović.

7Image: Anka Burić, Imprint of Time – Stećci in Montenegro, 2018, frottage archeography, 166x148cm, site: Šumorova Gora, Plužine. Courtesy of Lazar Pejović.

8Image: Anka Burić, Imprint of Time – Stećci in Montenegro, 2018, frottage archeography, 213.5x122.5cm, site: Gornje Rudinice, Plužine. Courtesy of Lazar Pejović.

9stećci is the name for monumental medieval tombstones, that lie scattered across Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the border parts of Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia. An estimated 60,000 are found within the borders of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina and the rest of 10,000 are found in what are today Croatia (4,400), Montenegro (3,500), and Serbia (2,100), at more than 3,300 odd sites with over 90% in poor condition.

10Image: Anka Burić, The Black Point Civil Protest, 2003, colour for concrete on canvas, 4x4m, Podgorica. Courtesy of the artist.

11Image: Anka Burić, Between East and West: Horrent Hedgehog, 2001–2002, compressed charcoal on linen canvas, 200x200cm. Courtesy of the artist.

12Image: Anka Burić, Between East and West: Chess Board, 2002, site-specific installation, 10x10m. Courtesy of the artist.

13Image: Anka Burić, Face of the Face, 2000, charcoal and acrylic on canvas, 140x350cm. Courtesy of the artist.