Donna Huanca: Wet Slit

Simon Lee Gallery presents a solo exhibition of new works by Bolivian-American artist Donna Huanca. This is Huanca’s debut exhibition with the gallery and her first solo show in London since SCAR CYMBALS, her 2016 commission at the Zabludowicz Collection. Incorporating painting, sculpture, sound and scent, Huanca’s site-specific installation immerses viewers in a total environment which synthesises her unique aesthetic with a politics of the body as it relates to space and temporality.

Huanca’s practice draws particular attention to the skin as the complex interface via which we experience the world around us. Her ‘skin’ paintings – layered on magnified cross-sections of her models’ painted figures photographed during performance – refer directly to the body. During the artistic process, she layers colours and forms with paint on her models, resulting in an indexical practice that places emphasis on the interaction between the ephemerality of experiential art and the permanence of painting. This exploration of the transient pertains directly to the temporal experience of the body, invoking themes of mortality and calling to mind the fleeting connections, both corporeal and emotional, brought about by physicality and touch.