From the Ashes/De las cenizas
The video opens with an abstract image, which is revealed to be a tiny hummingbird, lying in my hand, seemingly dead or dying. The little bird suddenly blinks its eye in a moment of “awakening” and elevates into a liberated flight, like the Phoenix of Greek mythology, which was reborn from its own ashes, or the hummingbirds of Aztec societies, which were believed to be resurrected warriors. As we collectively confront a mortal environmental crisis, this video speaks to the fragility of the balance of nature. It questions the conflicted and precarious relationships we have with the natural world, and presents a hopeful image of the essence of nature: strong, tenacious and perseverant, in spite of humankind.
– Courtesy of the artist, Espacio Mínimo (Madrid) and Diablo Rosso (Panamá)
Donna Conlon lives and works in Panama City, Panama.
Her practice is based on observations of her everyday surroundings, both urban and natural. Her works reveal the ironies and contradictions inherent to our contemporary lifestyles, especially calling attention to the fragile coexistence of human beings with the natural world.
Conlon has exhibited widely, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2022), Tate St. Ives (2021), Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (2020), Met Breuer, NY (2019), Kadist, San Francisco (2018), Prospect New Orleans (2017), the Asunción Biennale, Paraguay (2015), Pérez Art Museum, Miami (2014), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY (2014), Mercosul Biennale, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2011), Istanbul Modern Art Museum (2006), and the Venice Biennale (International Exhibition and Italo-Latinamerican pavilion, 2005).
Grants and awards include: Guggenheim Fellowship (2025), Anonymous Was a Woman award (2022), and Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation grant for emerging Latin American artists (2007). Her individual and collaborative works are in collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Tate Modern.
At Shedhalle, her work Coexistencia (2003) was presented in the frame of the project series Colonialism without colonies? Relations between tourism, neocolonialism and migration in 2006.
