Nia Burks, BFA, MA, MFA

Part of my story…

I am an artist, writer, and founder of Butter & Filth, the most conceptually rigorous and (one of the most) commercially successful pole and movement studios in the United States. My work sits at the intersection of erotic intelligence, pedagogy, and contemporary art, building frameworks that treat sensuality as a form of knowledge.

With 3 fine arts degrees and over sixteen years of experience teaching at the university level, I bring an academic precision to the kinds of disciplines often dismissed as frivolous or feral. My methodology, The Creative Erotic Method positions desire and the body as a site of inquiry, authorship, and power. My classes and programs are known for attracting discerning women who are interested in their own expansion.

As the founder of Hard Soft Press, an imprint of Butter & Filth, I extend this philosophy into publishing, championing work that resists simplification and finality. My editorial vision prioritizes depth, contradiction, and the refusal of false binaries between rigor and vulnerability, intellect and eroticism.

My work has been shaped by an interdisciplinary career spanning video art, art history, and international residency work in Berlin and Reykjavik. I have written 6 workbooks, several chapters in higher education text books, two dissertations and over 10,000 non fiction vignettes. Across all mediums, my central concern remains the same: I want to create structures that allow people, especially women, to access forms of power that cannot be easily named, commodified, or contained.

I am known for building spaces that are all at once exacting and permissive, where high standards and deep pleasure can coexist.