Donna Huanca

The body and skin are ongoing points of focus in Huanca’s work, where she employs them as both surface and material. The painted performers, who populate the immersive environments composed of Huanca’s studio works, dissimulate amongst the various elements, joining and extending them; this oscillation in and out of sentience composes an allegory to the fragmentation of identity. Donna Huanca’s paintings are derived from these durational performances. After collaging and printing images from past performances and prior works onto canvas, Huanca paints over this documentation with oil, sand and raw pigments - on the one hand camouflaging this history, while at the same time extending the duration of the performance into perpetuity. Recent solo exhibitions include OBSIDIAN LADDER curated by Olivia Marciano at the Marciano Foundation, Los Angeles; LENGUA LLORONA curated by Aukje Lepoutre Ravn at Copenhagen Contemporary, Copenhagen; PIEDRA QUEMADA curated by Stella Rollig at the Belvedere Museum, Vienna, and the Yuz Museum, Shanghai. Upcoming, Huanca will have major solo presentations at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Marfa Ballroom, Marfa; Arnolfini Museum, Bristol; and at Dallas Contemporary, Dallas. Huanca’s work is included in important international museum collections and foundations including including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection, New York, US; Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK; Rubell Family Collection, Miami, US; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, CN; Belvedere Museum, Vienna, AT; and the Yuz Museum, Shanghai, CN.