The Art of Taking Space
Studio Lenca on art, immigration, and creating opportunities.
Studio Lenca shot by Benjamin Eagle
I don’t consider myself religious, but since I left Mexico there’s something about La Virgen de Guadalupe that speaks to me. It might be nostalgia or the fact that her image represents community, especially for Latinos scattered around the world.
As we all do, I was doing a deep dive on Instagram searching for inspiration when I came across a portrait of two male figures dressed in bold pachuco red suits, wearing big matching hats, one of them carrying the image of La Virgen de Guadalupe on his jacket pocket.
“Guadalupe" 2022 by Studio Lenca
Studio Lenca is the working name of artist José Campos, and the man behind such paintings. Through his art, Studio Lenca talks about his experience of being an illegal immigrant in the USA in a joyful way.
“Most people don’t know how to navigate the immigration subject”, José told me. “Immigration forms identity, it’s like a superpower”.
Born in Santiago Nonucalco in El Salvador, when he was 3 years old, in 1989 (which is considered the worst year of El Salvador’s civil war); his mom decided to do a journey through land to The US. “She was a young woman so I can’t even imagine what that was like for her.” He tells me when I ask him to share a bit of his experience with me. “When we had to cross the border, she had to give me to a smuggler but the person that was delivering me was really late so she started to freak out about what she had done. She always tells me that story and I can’t believe that is something people still do now”. He carried on.
“Imagine doing a trip on land, living with no papers, and being successful. It’s sort of like being an artist because you have to be creative and improvise, you have to make something out of nothing”.
José grew up in San Francisco and didn’t become a legal citizen until he was 16. He describes the experience as uneasy, as being in a situation where you could never draw attention to yourself, and not being able to do anything wrong out of fear of being caught while simultaneously not being able to think about the future.
José started his creative journey during high school, he attended The San Francisco School of the Arts, where we studied dance under choreographer Alonzo King, who by hiring only black and brown bodies in the ballet industry, was breaking the stereotype of how the industry “should look like”. King acted as both a teacher and a mentor in developing Studio Lenca’s critical way of thinking, values that he carries into his own practice today.
Studio Lenca works under the philosophy of “taking up space”, so during our conversation, I had to ask José, what he exactly meant by it. “Taking up space for me is about creating visibility in spaces where you wouldn’t normally be visible in. I do think about my education, when I was studying ballet, the teachers that I had were afro-Latinos. I always think of that because they were in spaces that were not comfortable for them, but in being there they were creating a space for others, just by being visible. I see it as a visible thing, like creating a hole for others to fill”. He explained.
When it comes to his paintings, taking up space has a more literal and physical meaning, one that is rooted in his background as a dancer. The portraits created by Studio Lenca depict male Salvadoran figures adorned with costumes and ornaments that playfully explore masculinity, and the colonial past of El Salvador while telling an autobiographical story that navigates borders and identities around the discourse of migration.
“It’s kind of like a rule, I always have these figures with big hats and that gives me the parameter to play with them and worry less about the composition and more about how their bodies are filled or the colors that I’m using”. He explains while showing me a couple of paintings around his studio. “ I do think it comes from my dance background, where it’s all about repetition and you have to do the same thing over and over again, but it’s all about the spaces in between.” He explained.
'Fortuna', 2023 by Studio Lenca
Studio Lenca left California 16 years ago and moved to the U.K. “I came to The Fringe Festival in Edinburgh as a performer where I met my partner and a year later I moved to London with him”. He told me. When he moved to the UK “life took over”, and that created a distance between him and dance. Eventually, José got an MA at The Place Contemporary Dance and later on an MA at Goldsmith’s for the arts and education and became a teacher.
“In California the conversation around immigration centers in Central Americans, in the U.K I don’t feel as connected with it, because that is not particularly the case, we are unrepresented”. He told me as we were talking about the differences between migrating to the US or to the U.K — both of us have experienced moving to the U.K from Latino backgrounds. “The Latino community in the U.K is quite hidden, so it is harder to be visible here, and there is also a much bigger appreciation for the little things, like accidentally stumbling into a café that plays Cumbia”. He says.
“I always feel like dance and paiting are the same part of my brain, when I was teaching I had to find ways of maintaining my practice because that is who I am”. He told me when I asked about his transition from dancing to painting.
José got to experience immigration from two points of view: once as a kid as a needed to survive while being undocumented, and once as an adult from a privileged way. This privilege is something José doesn’t take for granted, he is using it to create opportunities for others.
“As a teacher, one of the things I love doing with young people is taking them into galleries, I had a show at Soho Revue, and I brought my students to come and see the work and have conversations about it,” He says. “I want to make them feel welcome in these spaces because a lot of these people come from communities that are often pushed to the side, and that in itself is a political thing, being critical of gallery spaces and art practices.” He told me as we were discussing the impact that his work has opened up political conversations and inspired change. “In education, we talk about the other but we don’t do anything, so allowing people to do it, has also had to do with taking up space. I always think that you have to see something twice to be able to do it and I hope that these children say that someone permitted them to be able to do whatever they wanted to do.” He finished.
As we were talking about the opportunities we have been able to create as immigrants - now in a position of privilege - we shifted the conversation to discuss culture and identity.
“I hate the question: Where are you from or why are you here? I always think is not an easy question to answer: Am I Latino? Am I American?” He says. “Culture for me is how you live your life and that can be my own queer identity and how that influences my day-to-day life. Identity for me because of the way my life started has to do with being an undocumented immigrant, my identity sits on the outside because a lot of people don’t know where El Salvador is or how Salvadoran people look like.” He carried on. “There’s a comfort of being on the outside, that’s the identity as well and you can use that experience to connect with others.”
“As immigrants you understand each other, it’s natural for people to be close to people that remind you of home, eat the same food, do things the same way. ”