Donna Huanca: Desert Deities

Mount Ruapehu, the largest active volcano in New Zealand, last erupted in 2007, sending a lahar of mud, rock, and water from the mountain’s crater sweeping down the mountain. In multimedia artist Donna Huanca’s current exhibition at Ballroom Marfa, “ESPEJO QUEMADA,” the painting Ruapehus Scar translates that sense of mutating energy to the canvas. One of an assembled quintet of paintings made with oil stick and sand on a digital print, its gestural, frenetic swirls in navy blues and icy whites create a tangle of passageways, through which it appears we’re witnessing a state change: solids melting into liquids, which begin flowing.