On Our Radar: Donna Huanca

Donna Huanca’s multisensory art installations transport viewers to another world - one that is ruled by the feminine. For her first big U.S. museum show, at the Marciano Art Foundation in Los Angeles this year, Huanca transformed the former Masonic Temple with a mass of white sand, totemlike steel sculptures, and monumental oil-on-canvas works. Nine painted nude models - a mix of cisgender and trans persons of different ethnicties - slowly moved about. A bespoke scent and a nature soundtrack rounded out the experience. “With every exhibition, I respond to the architecture and history of the location,” says the Berlin-based artist. “The temple was created to enforce patriarchal power. To hold a femme space was truly an epic feat.”