Studio Lenca (Live in Margate)
Talk Art
Russell Tovey and Robert Diament c/o Independent Talent
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2024
⏱️ 51 minutes
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Summary
Talk Art Live! We meet artist Studio Lenca (Jose Campos) within his recent solo exhibition 'Leave to Remain' at Carl Freedman Gallery in Margate.
‘Leave to Remain’ is the official term used by the UK Home Office, meaning someone who is allowed to stay in the UK with restrictions and without permanent legal status. According to the latest data from the UNHCR, 70.8 million people around the world have been forced from their own homes. Among them are 25.9 million refugees, over half aged under 18. In this latest body of work, Studio Lenca continues to explore his own displaced experience whilst questioning universal themes of belonging, home and lost histories.
Growing up as an illegal immigrant, Studio Lenca travelled illegally overland to the USA, growing up ‘without papers’ in San Francisco. As a young adult the artist moved to the UK, settling in Margate where he is now based. In his ‘Los Historiantes’ paintings Studio Lenca continues to play with the frames of history and identity. This new series depicts the folkloric dancers that theatrically re-enact stories of colonisation and the subjugation of indigenous peoples. The work playfully references a combination of biographical anecdotes, personal reflections and national iconography.
Alongside his characteristically vivid paintings, Studio Lenca will collaborate with KRAN (Kent Refugee Action Network), turning Carl Freedman Gallery into a working studio. Young refugees and asylum seekers will work with Studio Lenca to build large sculptural works based on the volcanoes of El Salvador. These works will explore the ‘borderless’ process of making and reference the artists own problematic encounters with a colonised education system.
Leave to Remain, offers a critical window within the gallery and a space for discussion. The show asks us to address Margate as a border town and who is allowed to leave and to remain.
Studio Lenca (b.1986 La Paz, El Salvador) is based at TKE Studios, Margate, UK.
Studio Lenca is the working name of artist Jose Campos – ‘Studio’ referring to a space for experimentation and making; ‘Lenca’ referring to the Mesoamerican indigenous people of southwestern Honduras and eastern El Salvador.
He works with performance, video, painting and sculpture. He received an MA from Goldsmiths University of London and his work is included in the permanent collection of the Pérez Art Museum Miami and the Parrish Art Museum in New York.
Follow @StudioLenca
Visit: https://carlfreedman.com/exhibitions/2024/studio-lenca/
Special thanks to @CarlFreedmanGallery (where Talk Art's Robert Diament is Partner).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, wherever you are in the world, I'm Russell Toby, |
| 0:08.5 | and I'm Robert Diemann. And this is Talk-Arts. |
| 0:10.7 | Welcome. Talk art. Welcome to Talk Art. |
| 0:15.0 | Where are we, Rob? |
| 0:17.6 | We are in a Margate today. |
| 0:20.6 | Whoa! Whoa! Look at that reaction! today. Well actually I've been meditating a lot about home and the idea of home and I've been thinking because the world at the moment is in such a huge conflict and it feels like there's so many different wars happening and so many different |
| 0:45.9 | I don't know that there's a lot of anger out in the world at the moment and I've been thinking |
| 0:51.0 | about this idea of home particularly particularly inspired by this exhibition, |
| 0:54.4 | because today's guest grew up in El Salvador and then moved across the Mexican border with |
| 0:59.2 | his mother into America and lived there undocumented without papers in the states for a long time before |
| 1:06.9 | eventually moving to Margate where he's now made his home with his partner. |
| 1:11.7 | And I've also moved to Margate and this has become an amazing |
| 1:14.7 | community and when I first met today's guest he had a shop on the high |
| 1:18.9 | street and he actually messaged me and said hello I know you're on a gallery |
| 1:22.1 | would you like to |
| 1:22.6 | come visit this is the High Street in Margate yeah the High Street in Margate and it was |
| 1:25.3 | a shop front that he hired and he made it his studio but it was a kind of space where you could |
| 1:29.5 | go in and experience the work and have a conversation and I think conversations are so key to what he does within his work and also collaboration and this exhibition at its center there's actually a room that there are three rooms in this exhibition but the |
| 1:43.9 | center room is this exhibition is also in your gallery oh yeah sorry it's that Carl |
| 1:49.8 | Friedman gallery in Margate and it runs until the 16th of June 2024 but obviously this episode |
| 1:55.2 | will continue so you can always look up images online at Carl Friedman.com but |
| 1:59.3 | the the exhibition was actually delayed a bit because Jose came to us with a really wonderful request which was he's been teaching |
... |
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