American artist Donna Huanca is known for her multi-sensory works and her continued exploration of themes including the body, the cycles of life, and the chaos of the natural world. She stunnes the audience with her impressive installations including large-scale paintings on canvas and sculptures in stainless steel and mixed media, as well as sound and scent.
Donna Huanca’s sinuous, abstract paintings reflect the life cycle of her performances by merging the transience of performance art with the permanence of painting.
The surfaces of her paintings are built upon images of bodies photographed during these performances, printed onto canvas and overpainted. Camouflaged by oil paint of vibrantly colored hues and tantalizing textural dimension, Huanca’s hallucinatory kaleidoscopes are distinguished by the intermixing of oil pigments with sand and other natural materials.
Donna Huanca (b. Chicago, 1980) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the human body and the natural world through mark-making, raw materials, immersive environments, and singular structures. Encompassing painting, sculpture, and live performance, Huanca’s installations are characteristically created for, and integrated with, the architectural spaces in which they are presented.
Her art is deeply invested in communal practice, exploring ritual at large as a means for transcendence, meditation, and transformation. Since 2012, Huanca has collaborated with performers, inviting them to improvise and interact with her surrounding sculptures and installations as their painted skin becomes a major element in the composition.
DONNA HUANCA “MINA DE AURA” CENTRO ANDALUZ DE ARTE CONTEMPORANEO SEVILLA, SPAIN Through April 5, 2026 https://www.caac.es/exposicion/donna-huanca/
READ MORE FROM ART & PHOTOGRAPHY
“THE SWIRL” – PAINTINGS & DRAWINGS OF MANI NEJAD Berlin and London based artist Mani Nejad has been developing his Brain Blitz series over a period of several years. It’s a comprehensive suite of delicate works weaving together various media …
ALI BANISADR – DENSE ALLEGORICAL PAINTINGS Perrotin Gallery has just presented a widely acclaimed solo presentation by Ali Banisadr at Art Basel Qatar. “Al-Kīmiyā – The Art of Transformation” unfolds across painting, sculpture, and works on paper to examine humanity’s enduring drive toward becoming, change, mutation,…
JANAINA TSCHÄPE AT MAX HETZLER GALLERY BERLIN Richly painted using large scale oil sticks in addition to the water-based pigments she previously employed, it marks a fresh direction in Tschäpe’s oeuvre. This material shift allows the artist to “draw” as one would with a pencil or pastel,…
