Bio

Dana Donaty (b. 1966, Columbus, Ohio) is a Colombian-American multidisciplinary artist based in Palm Beach County, Florida. She holds a BFA from Moore College of Art & Design and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Donaty’s practice spans painting, assemblage, fiber, installation, performance, and text-based media, engaging themes of cultural identity, disability, health, memory, and mortality through the lens of intergenerational feminism.

Donaty’s solo exhibitions include: Moore College of Art and Design (Philadelphia, PA), Coral Springs Museum (Coral Springs, FL), Cornell Museum of Art (Delray, FL), South Florida Ford (Miami, FL), Mattie Kelly Art Center Galleries, NW Florida State College (Destin, FL), Florida Atlantic University Library (Jupiter, FL), and a forthcoming show at The Arts Warehouse (Delray, FL) in 2026–27. Selected group shows include: The Invisible Dog Art Center (Brooklyn, NY), Penn + Brush (New York, NY), Hera Gallery (Wakefield, RI), The Camp Gallery (Miami, FL), Coral Springs Museum (Coral Springs, FL), Flatiron Gallery (New York, NY), Wavelength Space (Chattanooga, TN), Palm Beach Cultural Council (Lake Worth, FL), Art and Culture Center (Hollywood, FL), and The Frank (Pembroke Pines, FL).

Her work is in the permanent collections of Cricket Taplin, the Satell Family Foundation, the Coral Springs Museum of Art, the Palm Beach County AIPP, and the Boynton Beach AIPP, and includes a commission for ArtLife West Palm Beach.

Donaty has been awarded a full fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT) for 2026. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Bakehouse Art Complex (Miami, FL); the Arts Warehouse (Delray, FL); South Florida Ford (Miami, FL); Frozen Music (Jaipur, India); and Kriti Gallery (Varanasi, India)

Artist Statement

Intergenerational feminist stories of cultural identity, disability, health, memory, and mortality are at the heart of my work. Using a vibrant and deceptively playful palette, my practice spans painting, fiber, assemblage, performance, and text-based media. In my multidisciplinary work, the female body is embraced as both a sanctuary and a battleground. Chronicling personal and collective histories, I respond to the emotional weight women carry and the embodied toll it takes. Early encounters with the medical field through my father’s practice, alongside feminist theory—such as Juliet Mitchell’s essay Women: The Longest Revolution (1966)—both ground and destabilize my practice.

Across media, I often use labor-intensive techniques (e.g., tufting), intentionally overwhelming, and maximalist aesthetics to depict and transform the challenges of moving through broken healthcare systems and the medical-industrial complex. Through these choices, vibrant color, play, and humor collide with heartache and rage—allowing energy to shift amid daily reminders of systemic burdens imposed upon women. My work speaks to the messy, inconvenient, and drawn-out contours of our journeys—inhabiting the dreamlike threshold between a collapsing world and the hope of elsewhere.