November
Perspectives: Miami Art Week
by Salomé Gómez-Upegui
This month’s residency was carried out in partnership with Untitled Art Fair and Art in Common.
Miami Art Week is a spellbinding time of the year. Seemingly overnight, thrilling fairs and captivating art shows take over the coastal city. For a few eventful days, countless artists, curators, buyers, and art connoisseurs make the most of Miami’s welcoming weather and vibrant multicultural charm. It’s an exceptional moment for enjoyment and communion, and a unique opportunity to shed light on gifted artists who deserve to be seen.
In November 2022 and into the first few days of December, Nereida Patricia, Marcela Cantuária, and Studio Lenca (née José Campos) shared a month at Fountainhead’s residency dedicated to artists participating in Miami Art Week. Despite hailing from distant corners of the world—Campos lives in London, Patricia in New York, and Cantuaria in Rio de Janeiro—the three agreed Miami instantly made them feel at home.
A dedicated poet, Nereida Patricia felt her writer’s block dissipate after a few days spent near Biscayne Bay’s “beautiful, reflective pools of water.” Language plays a pivotal role in her artistic practice, which often begins with poetry. “I don’t sketch much, and a lot of times I rely on ideas or lists I write in my notebook. All of my works tie in with my poetry, and I think this gives [the viewer] more access to the themes I’m trying to discuss,” she says.
Working across many mediums, including painting and sculpture, Patricia’s stunning oeuvre delves into themes of trans poetics, feminism, and mythology, all greatly informed by her Peruvian ancestry.
For instance, she believes “arpilleras” (Latin American textile artworks made from burlap) have been essential to inspire her mesmerizing reliefs, and powerful symbols of pre-Columbian mythology, including birds and snakes, regularly emerge in her works.
During her time at Fountainhead, Patricia worked on “Primordial Water,” a large-scale, site-specific fountain sculpture that draws precisely on ancestral themes. For her Miami Art Week debut, her work was featured in “Boil, Toil & Trouble,” an exhibition curated by Zoe Lukov which showcased artists who “explore mystical, mythological, or spiritual frameworks and practices as they pertain to water.”
Brazilian artist Marcela Cantuária also centers elements of mysticism in her works. Her vibrant paintings, which likewise delve into themes of political activism and art history, often illustrate the struggles of female social leaders from her homeland. “I see painting as a tool to revive the memories of humans with important [usually forgotten] stories. I believe painting has the power to be magical and to restore the memories stolen from us by dominant powers,” she says.
A longtime tarot reader and devotee, Cantuaria’s paintings are frequently riddled with symbolism, and the series she worked on during her time at Fountainhead was no exception. “Currently, there’s a moment of governmental transition in Brazil, and I wanted to materialize it, so I drew on a series of archetypes,” she explains. Visible in her spirited works, there’s an empress, which represents “a great moment for the arts in Brazil,” while a shadow figure alludes to the fact that “as women and minority groups, we can never truly relax.”
Cantuaria, who is set to have a solo show at the Perez Art Museum in Miami in March 2023, participated in Art Basel with her gallery, A Gentil Carioca, as has been the case numerous times before. Yet, it was her first time in Miami and she found the city to be full of wonders. In particular, she lit up recounting her residence experience with Patricia and Campos, with whom, serendipitously, she had close friends and acquaintances in common. “I believe we’ve been connected since before—like a web—except we didn’t know. And now we do.”
Based in London, where he’s often felt like an outsider and where Latinx artists rarely receive the visibility they deserve, José Campos, the mind and soul behind Studio Lenca, is especially grateful for the opportunity to connect with fellow Latinx artists. A native of La Paz, El Salvador, Campos immigrated by land to San Francisco, California, at a young age, where he spent years living as an undocumented immigrant. His experience of being targeted and simultaneously invisibilized as a migrant profoundly inspires his work.
Throughout his practice, Campos has developed an autobiographical figure that is intent on taking up space. At Fountainhead, he brought his portraits to life with a series of large-sized kaleidoscopic characters with plain wooden backs drawn on by migrants who worked with Campos to tell their stories. On one eye-catching figure, the artist wrote: “ni de aquí, ni de allá,” (“not from here, not from there”), a phrase that speaks volumes about the migrant experience and, fittingly, the story of too many Miami residents. “These figures are a metaphor for the experiences I’ve been through and the people I’ve encountered,” Campos explains.
In partnership with Y.ES Contemporary, an organization supporting artists from El Salvador, Studio Lenca’s rich-hued pieces glowed against a bubblegum pink backdrop at Untitled Art fair. Speaking about this showstopping quality of his works, Campos says, “My work is trying to scream out: look at me. I’m Latinx. I exist. Let’s connect.”
This ability to call attention to commonly hidden narratives with eye-catching artworks is something Campos, Cantuaria, and Patricia have in common. Despite their distinctive styles and the diverse themes they seek to address with their works—all shaped by their unique personal backgrounds—during Miami Art Week, a sea of innumerable affairs and exhibitions, these Latinx artists managed to stand in their power and boldly uplift otherwise disregarded truths.
Marcela
Cantuária
Marcela Cantuária develops paintings that intertwine historical images from the universe of politics to representations of contemporary visual culture. Part of her pictorial inventions come from research on the struggles waged by women around the world, such as the work Sônia, 2019, which pays homage to a riverside communist guerrilla woman killed by military agents in the Araguaia region, during Brazil’s first military coup in 1964.
Cantuária’s work was on view at Art Basel Miami Beach during Miami Art Week 2022. She was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she currently lives and works.
Counterclockwise from right: A portrait of Marcela Cantuária by Francesca Nabors; A photo of Cantuária’s work in her studio at Fountainhead Residency by Carolina Menendez; Star, 2022. Oil and acrylic on canvas; The Devil, 2022. Oil and acrylic on canvas; A portrait of Marcela Cantuária in her studio at Fountainhead Residency by Francesca Nabors.
Studio
Lenca
José Campos is Studio Lenca—a name that both refers to a space for experimentation and his ancestors from El Salvador. Born in La Paz, El Salvador, he traveled to the United States illegally by land with his mother and grew up in the gaze of a strictly conservative administration as an ‘illegal alien.’ Studio Lenca’s practice is focused on ideas surrounding difference, knowledge, and visibility. He works with performance, video, painting, and sculpture.
His process begins with personal memories and is underpinned by social activism and different forms of praxis. His paintings tell an autobiographical story that navigates borders and identities destroyed, redrawn, and erased through colonization and war. The portraits depict the artist and his community proudly wearing hats and vibrant colors in noble defiance of the ‘Western’ discourse around migration. Studio Lenca is currently based in the United Kingdom.
Clockwise from left: A photo of Studio Lenca’s work in his studio at Fountainhead Residency by Carolina Menendez; A photo of Studio Lenca in his studio at Fountainhead Residency by Francesca Nabors; A portrait of Studio Lenca with his work by Francesca Nabors; studio shot by Carolina Menendez.
Nereida Patricia
Nereida Patricia’s practice spans sculpture, painting, and performance, and explores themes of mythology, trans poetics, and identity. Her work draws from postcolonial and Black feminist theory, Peruvian and Caribbean symbolism, as well as autobiographical fragments, to explore trans femininity, violence, gender, race, and sexual politics. She has studied at The New School and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute Chicago.
Her work has been exhibited at venues such as DUPLEX (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Eric Firestone Gallery (New York), Monique Meloche Gallery (Chicago), Prairie Gallery (Chicago), Annka Kultys Gallery (London), the Museum of the Moving Image (New York), and The Knockdown Center (New York), among others. During Miami Art Week 2022, Patricia’s work was featured in the exhibition “Boil Toil & Trouble,” curated by Zoe Lukov. She was born in New York and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Clockwise from top: A photo of Nereida Patricia working in her studio at Fountainhead Residency by Francesca Nabors; A portrait of Nereida Patricia at Fountainhead Residency by Francesca Nabors; FEMME QUEEN BODY, 2022. Concrete, glass beads, glass dust, acrylic, and paper clay on canvas; AFTER JOSEPHINE (BANANA SKIRT), 2022. Concrete, glass beads, glass dust, acrylic, and cement on wood panel.
Cantuária, Uma proposta para o reencantamento (A proposal for re-enchantment), 2022. Photo credit Vicente de Mello
Cantuária , Senti como se um grande grito infinito atravessasse a natureza (I felt as if a great infinite scream went through nature ), 2022. Photo credit Vicente de Mello.
Cantuária, Fogueira doce (Sweet bonfire), 2022. Photo credit Vicente de Mello.
Studio Lenca, A losing game, 2022. Oil and acrylic on canvas.
Studio Lenca, I’m working on leaving, 2021. Oil on canvas.
Studio Lenca, Taking up space, 2022.
Patricia, MY DREAMS TAUGHT ME, 2021. Glass beads, glass dust, glitter, acrylic, and paper clay on wood.
Patricia, VERTICAL ASCENT, 2022. Concrete, glass beads, glass dust, acrylic, and cement on wood panel.
Patricia, TAKE ROOT AMONG THE STARS, 2022. Concrete, glass beads, glass dust, acrylic, and cement on canvas.