1980, Chicago. A multi-disciplinary artist whose practice moves along the interstices between the human body and the natural world, Donna Huanca explores systems of knowledge and forms of ritual as means for transcendence, meditation and transformation. Encompassing painting, sculpture and live performance, her approach to art often translates into complex installations, characteristically created from and integrated within the specific architectural spaces they are presented in. Objects thereby serve as multi-purpose signifiers while materials emerge as repositories of information. In a further extension of her artistic research, Donna Huanca has collaborated with performers since 2012, inviting them to interact with her environments and installations. Painted skin has subsequently become a major element in her practice, serving as a living surface to extend the life cycle of her artistic process. In a transformative gesture, the performances find their way into her complex paintings where they act as templates for the compositions she projects upon the stills taken during these interventions. By investigating femme and indigenous perspectives, Donna Huanca destabilises a still dominant male gaze, conjuring alternative narratives that reflect on the positionality and thrownness of human existence. In this context, her fascination with the recurrent processes of birth, decay and renewal translate into works where the fluidity of earthly and bodily cycles emerge across layered compositions of mark-making. Her sinuous, abstract paintings build upon images of the bodies captured during her performances, thus playing with the transcience of the medium. Printed onto canvas and overpainted, the photographs are camouflaged by oil paint of vibrant colour and tantalising texture. Sand and other natural materials blend with oil pigments to render hallucinatory panels that overcome the evancescence and fleetingness of the time-based singular act. In a synthesis of creative expression, Donna Huanca conjures immersive environments and alluring topographies that challenge the beholder to look into and beyond her kaleidoscopic works. Donna Huanca has had solo and group exhibitions at Zuzeum (Riga), Sean Kelly NY (NYC), Faruschou (NYC), Museo de Arte de Zapopan (Zapopan, Mexico), Henry Art Gallery (Seattle), Nitsch Foundation (Vienna). Her works can be found in various private and public collections including among others the Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection (NYC), Belvedere Museum (Vienna), Espacio 1414/Berezdivin Collection (Santurce, Puerto Rico), Marciano Art Foundation (Los Angeles) Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid), Rubell Family Collection (Miami), Sifant Art Museum (Nanjing), Yuz Museum (Shanghai).