‘A LOSING GAME’
BY STUDIO LENCA
3rd - 28th of November 2022
In ‘A Losing Game,’ his first solo show in London at Soho Revue, Studio Lenca paints figures elegantly escaping arrows. The balletic and graceful poses suggest a sense of dignity, dexterity, and resilience. The arrow a tool used to colonise and destroy indigenous peoples and cultures become futile and useless as they are expertly deflected. The Latinx figures in Jose’s work have spent a lifetime dodging metaphorical arrows from all directions. Systemic racism, discrimination and the threat of deportation are aimed, fired and out- manoeuvred. The global legacy of colonialism providing the backdrop for this battle.
Unapologetically vibrant colours, bold marks and statuesque poses present us with a new narrative. These portraits sit in noble defiance of the ‘western’ discourse around displaced people.
Studio Lenca’s work is based on the lived experience of the artist. At the age of 4, the civil war in El Salvador forced him to take the illegal and perilous journey overland to the US with his mother. When they reached California life became more chaotic and precarious. The pair found themselves in a bureaucratic limbo, stateless and grappling with a hostile environment. Jose’s mother worked ‘without papers’ as a cleaner living with the daily threat of deportation. The family found themselves in a game of unequal odds.
“I identify as a Latinx artist, as it speaks to my experience and many like me as an undocumented and displaced person in the USA. Something that has had an indelible effect on me as a person and an artist.”
Free provision in the Arts afforded Studio Lenca the chance to become an artist. Although this offered a sense of confidence and mobility, further barriers around class and race seemed more intense in the predominantly white spaces of the Arts.
“I used to see art on the walls when I would work with my mother cleaning houses. Now I was making art with the people that lived in these houses, who paid cleaners and gardeners that looked like me.”
After a 9-year absence Studio Lenca visited El Salvador with the hope of refining his practice and sourcing materials. Going alone for a prolonged period instead of the usual family visits allowed the artist to resolve a narrative constructed by media and family hear-say. The visit proved to be transformational, allowing Jose to meet fellow Salvadoran artists and work with institutions such as MARTE and La Fabr- K.
Jose’s current practice and subsequent recognition as an artist have meant that he has been able to transgress long held social structures within El Salvador. Family visits to his village followed by cocktails with collectors have provided the artist with a holistic insight into the country and its hierarchical intricacies. In Studio Lenca’s work voices are amplified and discussions take place, the language of which is provided by the power of an Arts education.
Studio Lenca has returned to the studio with more questions than answers. El Salvador revealed itself to him as a more complex place than ever. The visit and resulting work for Soho Revue is a meditation on the journey he, his community and country have travelled.
A Losing Game is about an unequal battle faced by immigrants and displaced people. Creativity and culture are stifled by systems and controls. Stories are left untold. In a battle where both sides lose, displaced people are constrained and silenced, entangled by bureaucracy and politics.
