About

Léa Donnan is a socially engaged, interdisciplinary installation artist working with video, the language of film, textiles and the hidden stories of objects. Her video work has been transmitted into space and travels widely there to this day.

Léa has exhibited widely, most notably at MoMa PS1 New York, The Van Abbe Museum Eindhoven, The Performance Space Sydney, The Burden Ironworks Museum in Troy NY and the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. She has presented major works and been an artist in residence at Campbelltown Art Centre and Artspace, Sydney. In the late 90’s and 2000’s she was a key player in the artist run gallery scene, culminating in the inception of the Australian Imperial Slacks Collective and produced major collaborative work with this group.

Donnan has been a guest artist at eminent American artist Andrea Zittel’s studio at A-Z West (The Institute for Investigative Living in Joshua Tree,) where she produced Desert Appliqué for the 700 mile long annual, High Desert Test Sites 2013. She has been an artist in residence at The Studios at Mass MoCA, Surel’s Place Idaho and NES Artist Residency Iceland, where she produced large scale outdoor works for the National Fisherman and Seafarers Festival.

Léa has been an artist educator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, Djamu Gallery at The Australian Museum and Little Orange at Campbelltown Arts Center in Australia. Currently she is focusing on socially engaged work with a groundbreaking American institution recognized nationally by The White House, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, and on National Public Radio.

A French born Australian citizen, who has spent a large portion of life semi nomadic, her work has been influenced by personal experiences while embedded in foreign communities from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia and Iceland, truly becoming a product of interwoven culture and politics. She currently resides in Western Massachusetts, USA.

In early 2018, while in residence at Mass MoCA, a car accident left Donnan with a brain injury that permanently affected her vision and mobility. At this time, Donnan created Whobody to serve as an archive and a re-entry to the process of creation after immense loss. She now prioritizes her own healing hand in hand with the empowerment of others through art making and education.