Donna Huanca: ESPEJO QUEMADA

Donna Huanca presents a series of new works commissioned by Ballroom Marfa in her exhibition ESPEJO QUEMADA. Huanca creates experiential installations that incorporate paintings, sculptures, video, scent and sound. The profound experiences and memories of Huanca’s first visit to Marfa in 2005 inspired the work in the exhibition. The artworks draw on visual, cultural, and mythological cues informed by feminism, decolonialism and the artist’s personal and familial histories, while simultaneously engaging with the biodiversity, geology, and dark skies of Far West Texas. The sky was particularly striking for Huanca–animated with cosmic and extraterrestrial forces while also revealing the natural rhythms of the sun and moon.

ESPEJO QUEMADA, Huanca’s first exhibition since the pandemic, uses mirrors as formal and metaphorical devices to respond to changing conditions. The exhibition title translates to “burnt mirror” in English (purposefully feminized in Spanish, alluding to Huanca’s feminist praxis), suggesting reflections of the current moment, portals to the past and future, and catalysts for combustion and change.

The experiences of time, touch and embodiment are reconsidered in the shadow of the pandemic, as physical contact and proximity are restricted and artworks are mostly encountered digitally. By working with an amalgam of color, texture, sound, and scent to enliven the senses, Huanca creates alternative and elongated temporal spaces for contemplation. Through perceptual transformations, we are reminded that the sentient body is a potent source that can receive and deliver knowledge and memories. Viewers experience powerful phenomenological shifts especially through her new work in Ballroom’s courtyard. The artist displays her first outdoor sculpture, which is made of polished steel and installed atop an adobe bench covered with light-and temperature-sensitive pigment. The work responds to not only the climate in Marfa but also the bodies that sit and engage with the sculpture.

ESPEJO QUEMADA is organized by Daisy Nam, Ballroom Marfa Curator.

Generous support is provided by Peres Projects; Henry Moore Foundation; Jeans Family, Switzerland; Robin Zendell; Texas Commission on the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts; Humanities Texas; The Brown Foundation, Inc.; Fairfax Dorn & Marc Glimcher; Virginia Lebermann & Family; Lebermann Foundation; The City of Marfa; the Ballroom Marfa Board of Trustees and the International Surf Club.