Donna Huanca blends performance and paint to defy the male gaze and decolonise contemporary art. Her multidisciplinary installations show painted models - which the artist refers to as ‘skin paintings’ - amidst serene environments created with sculpture, painting, photography, sound and scent. Symbolic gestures suffuse throughout: rectangular free-standing paintings represent phone screens or digital interfaces, while cobalt blue embodies female power. Huanca uses a range of materials including silicone, plastic, clay, sand, textiles, hair, turmeric and metal. This mix of artificial and organic materials became particularly pertinent in 2020 during the outbreak of Covid-19: “I wanted to acknowledge ‘nature’ in a new form, both toxic, artificial, yet protective. The layered scent of wood, mingled with the sanitary, antiseptic hand-sanitiser gel we are bathing in.”