A Dream of Elsewhere | Exhibition

A Dream of Elsewhere; Notes on a Life Shaped by Illness

Drawing on her experiences, Dana Donaty confronts women’s health, care, and belonging through painting, fiber sculpture, and installation.
On View December 4th, 2026 until February 27th, 2027

A Dream of Elsewhere: Notes on a Life Shaped by Illness brings together painting and fiber sculptures alongside a waiting room installation to consider what it means to inhabit a body altered by illness and how that fractures one’s sense of belonging in the world. Drawing on her own experiences, Donaty connects the personal to broader questions of women’s health and medicine, care, and healing. Behind a wall, a waiting room installation recalls the hours Donaty spends in medical care, introducing tension between the experience of being unwell and the studio’s creative life, where illness is transmuted. Female figures, lush landscapes, medicinal plants, and anatomical imagery intertwine, bringing the natural world into conversation with the medical one.

Illness follows her into the studio, but there the balance of power shifts: no longer simply the subject of examination, she becomes the one who observes, interprets, and creates. Across the exhibition, making becomes a means of reclaiming authority over the body’s story—not by resolving its uncertainty, but by giving form to experiences that clinical accounts cannot fully hold.

About the artist
Dana Donaty (b. 1966, Columbus, Ohio) is a Colombian-American artist based in South Florida. She holds a BFA from Moore College of Art & Design and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Her practice spans fiber, painting, sculpture, and installation, considering what it means to inhabit a body shaped by illness within the broader
context of women’s health, medicine, and care. Donaty has received emergency grants from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and CERF+; a Full Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center; and has been awarded residencies at ChaNorth, The Arts Warehouse, Bakehouse Art Complex, South Florida Ford, and Kriti Gallery. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Coral Springs Museum of Art, the Satell Family Foundation, Cricket Taplin, Palm Beach County Art in Public Places, Boynton Beach Art in Public Places, and West Palm Beach Art in Public Places. Selected solo exhibitions include Moore College of Art & Design, Coral Springs Museum of Art, The Arts Warehouse, Cornell Museum of Art, and South Florida Ford. Selected group exhibitions include The Invisible Dog Art Center, Pen + Brush, Hera Gallery, The Camp Gallery, the Mexican Consulate, Flatiron Gallery, Wavelength Space, the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County, and Art and Culture Center Hollywood.