• In the central area of the composition, a prominent element emerges from beneath Huanca’s layers of paint: a braid of pink hair, adorned with a circular piercing, winding across the surface of the canvas
• Hair is a recurrent motif throughout Huanca’s practice. Hair DNA contains an infinite amount of information about our past experiences, living conditions and personal trajectories, and Huanca uses this motif as a metaphorical diary of human existence
• Piercings are another recurrent motif in Huanca’s practice, alluding to the corporeal dimension of her work. Throughout her practice, Huanca plays with materials and objects that are associated with the body, and used for purposes of pain, pleasure, or protection, just like piercings that simultaneously adorn and penetrate the body. Both ornaments and signifiers, they say something about one’s history, identity, personality. Ornamentation as an ancestral means of communication and self-expression is very present in Huanca’s work
• Piercings also highlights the fact that the body and skin serve as an interface between our inner and outer life
• The painting also conveys Huanca’s own physical engagement with her materials which she applies by hand, modeling them with her palms or fingernails, scratching and rubbing the surface of the canvas
• In Huanca’s paintings, fragments from the body emerge from under thick layers of oil, sand and raw pigments. Collaged photographs of past performances printed on canvas form the bedrock of these paintings. Close-ups of Huanca’s performers’ painted skin are camouflaged by layers of colors that create a tactile surface similar to a new skin