Portrait of Donna Huanca by Richie Shazam
For some the body is a temple, for others an amusement park that must be enjoyed, for Donna Huanca (1980, Chicago, USA) it is a vessel of alluring mystery. It is through this beautiful and tangled mixture of bones, flesh, and blood that we experience our own existence unfolding in time and space. Huanca's art is carnal, physical, it speaks of an ancestral world, while remaining firmly anchored to contemporaneity. It challenges the virtualization of the present, but is not immune to its charm; it delves into the notion of artifice, but draws inspiration from the manifestations of nature. Combining raw materials, painting, sculpture, performance, and even sound, Huanca refuses any attempt at categorization. Although beautiful, her works are not decorative; indeed, her practice often escapes the constraint of two dimensions to penetrate the concreteness of human life and experience its volatile mutability, sometimes gentle and slow, sometimes abrupt and sudden.
