What is the passion that gets you to the studio to make your work?

I go to nature as much as possible to observe the peace and chaos and its constant change. Meditation tunes me into a sensitive focus and provides me with inspiration for innovation and evolution in my practice.

I strive to offer the audience a glitch in the world around them, a portal that can function as a reflection pool for anyone open to the experience.

How do you orchestrate the multi-layered and multi-disciplinary aspects in your installations?

I engage all of the senses as a guide to create imprints of memory: sound, smell, visuals, scale and haptic vibrations. I started working in sound before visual art and this gave me alternate perspective on working with space. When working with different spaces, the context of the space matters: the architecture, culture, history of that environment. I seek to create installations that can be universally understood through the experience of the work within these spaces. 

Are some of your paintings time markers for past installations?

Yes- every painting carries stored information from the previous live performances and encounters- these ephemeral experiences guide future works.

How has your work evolved over the last few years?

My evolution can be traced to a focus on creating situations that serve the performers and audience simultaneously but in different ways. I have been working closely with the same performers over the years and have been in conversation of how to optimize the experience for everyone involved. 

about donna huanca

Born in 1980, in Chicago, Illinois, Donna Huanca’s interdisciplinary practice evolves across painting, sculpture, performance, choreography, video and sound, crafting a unique visual language based in collaboration and innovation. At the very heart of her oeuvre is an exploration of the human body and its relationship to space and identity. Huanca live sculptural pieces, or in the artist’s words, ‘original paintings’, work primarily with the nude female body, drawing particular attention to the skin as a complex surface via which we experience the world around us. Largely collaborative, the partnership between artist and model is imperative to Huanca’s practice. By exposing the naked body, while at the same time concealing it beneath layers of paint, cosmetics and latex, Huanca and her performers urge the viewer to confront their own instinctive response to the human form, which, in the artist’s hands, is both familiar and distorted, decorative and abstract.

In 2019, Huanca had major exhibitions at the Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, California, and the Copenhagen Contemporary, Denmark. In 2018, she had exhibitions at both the Belvedere Museum, Vienna, Austria, and Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China.

Donna Huanca lives and works in Berlin, Germany.