Donna Huanca

Donna Huanca’s paintings are recognizable for their vibrancy, boldness, and brightness in their use of blues, yellows, oranges, and greens. Central to Huanca’s practice are the body and the skin, which remain continuous focal points in the construction of her body of work. She utilizes them as both imagery and as a surface for her compositions. Surrounded by Huanca’s studio paintings, her performers immerse themselves in her constructed environment, their painted bodies melding and merging with the backdrop. This bridging between static painted backdrop and living, sentient bodies is a vehicle for exploring the fragmented nature of identity. Huanca draws on these durational performances to construct her paintings. She begins by covering the canvases with collaged images of prior performances and works, and then paints over the surface with oil, sand, and raw pigments. Her intention is to obscure this documentation, the archive of her practice, hiding it in plain sight, and also constructing a perpetual performance on the surface of her canvases.