Burga studied at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima, where she became a founding member of the Arte Nuevo group (1966–1968), which introduced Pop Art, Op Art, and other neo-avant-garde movements to the Peruvian art scene. She pursued an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) between 1968 and 1970 through a Fulbright scholarship.

Burga’s practice was vast and interdisciplinary, encompassing conceptual drawing, Pop-inflected painting, slide projections, environments, and cybernetic installations. Her work was less about aesthetic form than about exposing the invisible frameworks—administrative, political, technological—that govern everyday life. For example, in 1981, she collaborated with psychologist Marie-France Cathelat on a socio-anthropological study titled “Perfil de la Mujer Peruana” (Profile of the Peruvian Woman), presented as an installation at the Banco Continental in Lima. Burga analyzed the socio-economic status of Peruvian women using data visualization, surveys, and anthropological methods. An homonymous book was published on the same year.

Despite her groundbreaking vision, Burga remained largely overlooked until the early 2000s. A younger generation of curators—Miguel A. López, Emilio Tarazona, and Dorota Biczel, among others—rediscovered her practice and worked closely with her to reconstruct her complex archives. Burga reentered the international art conversation and held her first major retrospectives at the ICPNA in Lima (2010) and the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart (2011). These exhibitions marked the beginning of a late but profound recognition of her contribution to global conceptual art.

She was the first Peruvian artist to participate in the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 and the Istanbul Biennale in 2011. Burga’s pieces have been featured in solo and group exhibitions at institutions like the Hammer Museum Los Angeles, the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, the MALBA in Buenos Aires, the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hannover, among others. Burga’s work is part of the permanent collections of major international institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Migros Museum, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen (M HKA), Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, and Sammlung Verbund Collection in Vienna. In 2014, Burga received the prestigious “Achievement Award” from the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation and in 2016 the Peruvian government granted her the “Personalidad Meritoria de la Cultura” recognition. She passed away in 2021, leaving an everlasting legacy to the art world.