Kay Burns

Kay Burns is a multidisciplinary artist based in Fogo Island, Newfoundland. Her work includes performance art, sculpture, photography, audio, installation and locative media. Her practice engages in site-specific responses to locations through a reinterpretation of local histories, mythologies, and the eccentricities of real and invented people who inhabit those places. Her work melds fact and fiction through alternative constructions of place and event, indirectly commenting on the authority associated with the dissemination of information. A significant part of Burns’ practice over the past dozen years has been the reinstatement of the defunct Flat Earth Society of Canada through her performance persona, Iris Taylor, entailing presentations of an evolving ‘recruitment lecture’ and the ongoing development of flat earth artifacts. Her performance work also includes curatorship of the Museum of the Flat Earth and guided ‘historical’ walks as Iris Taylor, as well as an extended walking practice through her involvement as a founding member of the Ministry of Walking collective. Her work has been presented internationally in Reykjavik, Amsterdam, Belfast, New York and Los Angeles; and across Canada from Dawson City to St. John’s. She previously held the post of curator at the Muttart Public Art Gallery in Calgary, and taught in the University of Calgary Fine Arts Department and the Alberta College of Art and Design Media Art Department prior to her move to Newfoundland. Burns continues to undertake freelance writing and curatorial projects, as well as mentorship and visiting teaching roles for various organizations and institutions.