Studio Lenca (b.1986)

Studio Lenca is the working name of artist Jose Campos, Lenca referring to the name of the artist’s ancestors from El Salvador, where he was also born. Campos, like many, had to flee the country during its violent civil war in the late 1980s. He and his mother travelled to the US by land, where he grew up an ‘illegal alien’ under the gaze of a strictly conservative administration. 

Studio Lenca is focused on ideas surrounding difference, knowledge and visibility. Personal memories and a process underpinned by social activism and different forms of praxis influence a body of work that includes performance art, videos, paintings and sculptures. His paintings tell an autobiographical story that navigates borders and identities that have been destroyed, redrawn and erased through colonisation and war. The portraits depict the artist and his community proudly wearing hats and vibrant colours in noble defiance of the Western discourse around migration.