LENGUA LLORONA by the internationally recognised Bolivian-American artist Donna Huanca is the first performance-based exhibition at CC. Through painting, sculpture, scent, sound, and performance, the exhibition centres on human body culture and relationship with nature, origin, memory, and time.

During the exhibition period, the scenographical and sensory installation will be activated by a series of eight live performances in which painted models will inhabit the space.The models, as Huanca calls her performers, are decorated with paint, pigment, and textiles. In a performance that is partly choreographed, partly improvised, the models occupy the space like living paintings, inhabiting the environment and leaving physical traces on the walls and floor.

Huanca’s performances differ from the general perception of body performance or body art. There is no narrative dramaturgy with a beginning and an end. Instead, the models create an enduring interplay with the space as a meditative bodily presence and an energy-filled emotional state. With the presence of the models, LENGUA LLORONA is transformed into a microcosmos of organic relations between body and environment.

Donna Huanca says about her performances: “I perceive the space as a cohesive elusiveness that can be activated at several levels. By virtue of their powerful presence, my models facilitate a transitory process which captures and develops the space. So, the models function as a kind of respiratory system of temporality and deconstruction. They sense and feel the space, leaving it changed.”

Huanca views skin as a foundation on which to create painterly surfaces and as the communicator of cultural identity. To Huanca, skin represents the definitive layer both uniting and separating us from our surroundings across time and space. By using the body and skin as canvas and performative tool, Huanca examines how dominating gender and body policies form our perception of identity and connectedness.With the models, she introduces a different gaze on the naked, vulnerable body, directing our focus on ideas about origin, memory, biology, and time.