Pete Burkeet is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, and educator whose work explores memory, place, technology, and storytelling across painting, video, animation, and photography.Raised in Ohio near a well contaminated by a nearby Superfund site, Burkeet channels the neglect and unease of that landscape into paintings and digital art centered on what they call America's “toxic underbelly”.
Burkeet's practice began in the 1990s as a painting undergraduate at the University of Akron, where they went on to earn an MFA in painting and digital art. During their studies, a late-night encounter outside a studio, which they believed to be the ghost of a student who had died in a nearby room five years earlier, deepened their engagement with themes of terror and the unknown. Burkeet lives near several abandoned Ohio malls, including one used by Craigslist killers as a site for murder and concealment in 2011, a backdrop that continues to inform their exploration of consumerism and uncertainty.
From 2017 to 2020, Burkeet's films and video works were shown at international festivals and venues including the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus and the FILE Electronic Language International Festival in São Paulo.A related work, Mannequin Mall, is a collection of paintings developed out of Burkeet's earlier animated painting Mannequin, described on its release as a piece “about a world without reason”.,In 2024, Burkeet released PLUG-IN / UNPLUG, a collection of AI-generated artworks contrasting consumers comfortable with modern life against those who feel anxious and want to escape it. Burkeet has said the series grew out of “my own personal experience growing up with pop culture”, including an obsession with small talk and a false sense of body perfection.
