Donna Huanca’s OBSIDIAN LADDER triggers the senses through painting, sculpture, sound, scent, and performance. This new topography, which is strikingly different from the rest of the building, transports visitors to another world—a femme realm of reconciliation, creation and trust. This gesture fractures the museum’s site as a former Scottish Rite Masonic Temple that was built by and for men. Every Saturday, painted femme models inhabit Huanca’s environment. Their movements through the space are self-determined, not bound to any direction from Huanca. She says,“These individuals are essential to the empowering process of reclaiming this space. My work has always been a poetic gesture commenting on societal imbalances and injustices. As I have had more opportunities to exhibit publicly, in different contexts globally, my work has evolved to directly confront patriarchal realities, power dynamics, and hierarchies of contemporary life.”