Donna Huanca, Photo by Tobias Willmann, © The artist
Donna Huanca (b. 1980, Chicago) is a Bolivian-American multidisciplinary artist whose immersive works merge painting, sculpture, live performance, sound and scent. Her practice explores the human body, natural cycles and ritual as pathways to transcendence, meditation and transformation. Drawing on women and Indigenous narratives, Huanca's art often destabilizes the male gaze, offering a deeply sensory and spiritual experience.
Huanca integrates her installations with the architectural spaces in which they are presented, blending impermanence and transformation. She collaborates with performers whose painted bodies interact with her sculptures, creating evolving artworks. These body paintings inspire her tactile canvases, layered with photographs and collage. Her work explores cycles of birth, decay and renewal, using materials such as second-hand clothing, altered garments, makeup and mirrors to evoke identity, origins and memory.
Educated at the University of Houston, Städelschule (Frankfurt) and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Huanca has received numerous accolades, including a Fulbright Scholarship and Art Matters Grant. She has exhibited widely, including solo shows at Belvedere Museum (Vienna), Yuz Museum (Shanghai) and Ballroom Marfa. Her works are in major collections such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York) and Belvedere Museum. Now based in Berlin, Huanca continues to create transformative installations that engage the senses and challenge perceptions of the body and identity.