Interview: Donna Huanca On Extractive Economies & The Transportive Power Of Scent

The interdisciplinary practice of Donna Huanca traverses painting, sculpture, performance, choreography, video and sound, combining to form a unique multisensory language underpinned by collaboration. At the very heart of her output is an exploration of the human body and its relationship to space and identity. Her 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. Open now and running until 1 January 2023, Huanca concludes Whitechapel Gallery’s series of artist-curated displays drawn from the collection of the Christen Sveaas Art Foundation with an invitation to enter PORTAL DE PLATA (Silver Portal). In this final presentation, Huanca brings together paintings and sculptures paired with a specially commissioned scent and sound work by the artist to address the entangled relationship between colonialism, displacement, and the state of self-recognition. To learn more, Something Curated spoke with Huanca.