26/08/2022 - 01/01/2023
Collection Display - Mixed Medium
Christen Sveaas Art Foundation: PORTAL DE PLATA, Selected by Donna Huanca
Tue-Wed: 11-6pm; Thu: 11-9pm (Late Opening); Fri-Sun: 11-6pm
Donna Huanca (b. 1980, USA) invites the viewer to enter a multi-sensory environment in which she addresses the entangled relationship between colonialism, displacement and self-creation in artmaking.
Huanca brings together antique silver objects and artworks from the Christen Sveaas Art Foundation to sit within an installation that transforms the gallery architecture into a meditative space of intimacy and reflection. Mirrored surfaces and silver spoons reflect the viewer folding them into the dialogue between the artworks and emphasising the relationship of the human body to its surroundings. Huanca often collaborates with choreographers, dancers and other artists to explore how the female body in particular relates to space and identity.
Drawing on her Bolivian heritage, Huanca has created an earthy and smoky olfactory diffusion and a recording of the artist’s father teaching her mother his native language from the silver mining regions of Bolivia. With these gestures, Huanca weaves together larger histories of European colonial wealth accumulation and resource extraction with her own family history.
Aldgate 82 Whitechapel High St, E1 7QX