A Little Corner #2
An Interview with visual artist Guadalupe Campos
Guadalupe Campos (They/He) is a multidisciplinary artist originally from Chicago and now currently based in Boston. This past week I had the chance to sit with them and really engage with them. I really have to thank them for being the first person I interviewed, and being so open and willing to be a part of this project.
VB: What’s the first piece of art you can remember making?
GC: (laughs) How well of a piece do you want? Any piece?
VB: Any piece!
GC: I was really small, that I can remember. I must’ve been less than six years old and we lived on the first floor of this multi-floor house. The neighbors that lived up on the top floor had an older daughter, and she taught me to draw a rose. It was a very simple rose, but I was just so amazed as a little kid, I vividly remember thinking “Oh, I’m going to draw.” It’s from there.
VB: It’s all from there?
GC: That’s the earliest thing I remember where I thought, “This is really cool.” It was not a very good rose. (laughs)
VB: Well hey, it was because it led to all of this.
GC: This is true. It’s my first year being a Teaching Assistant for an elementary art class, and so I teach it to my kids, sometimes they want to know how to draw flowers. It feels a little full circle for sure.
VB: The fact you’re able to pinpoint and go back on that specific image shows the impact that drawing has had for you. You've moved away from purely drawing, and you’re much more of a multidisciplinary artist. Now that that’s the case, your work revolves around using hair. What makes hair such an appealing material for you?
GC: I think it has two reasons. First off, there’s a very visual reason. I really like how it’s just a contour line, just looking at it in a very basic way. You put it on paper and it’s a drawing. The first time I started using hair, I was having a lot of conflicting ideas about my own hair. It was a very real and relevant topic to me, because I had just moved and was thinking about cutting my hair, and my mom was against it. It felt like an important part of being Queer. I was attached to the idea of hair being a way to shift the way that people see me. I didn’t have to fit into a specifically feminine box and I could play with that with my hair, and then I was just kind of obsessed with it afterwards.
VB: It's that idea of hair being such a signifier of identity.
GC: Definitely. It’s moved from being queerness and hair to now the only way where I can be close to my friends. They gift it to me and I take care of it, it’s not a normal thing. (laughs) People mail me hair or come with little bags to dinner, it’s been a way for me to bond with my friends. A lot of them have moved away, and I still have it. I’ve been a part of really important moments. One of my friends cut all of their hair off, and I was the one to cut it. It’s still queer, because I’m getting it from queer people and about their queer experiences, but it feels intimate and present. It’s definitely a symbol of the past.
VB: Do you think hair in turn is memory? Your piece Tokens is a way to access the memory and the stories behind these people.
GC: I’m glad you brought up memories. I was really obsessed with memory and how there are different versions of ourselves in the past, and what is left to remember it. Sometimes I see hair as a gift. I’ve named some of my pieces Gifts Of Service. I like using hair as a place marker for something. The most recent piece that I have is Let’s Age Like Trees. The rings in a tree show you the years that have passed and I found similarities with that and the lines in hair and the longer it grows, the longer time has passed.
VB: My mom has hair from my uncle, who’s passed away, and she still treasures that hair as a signifier of him.
GC: There’s a whole history of hair as jewelry. They’ll be in lockets or rings. Hair is a primitive form of rope, and there’s a bunch of artists who used hair for paint and it was in practice a lot during the nineteenth century, the Victorian Era.
VB: I've heard of that. It reminds me that relics have fallen out of fashion. Do you view them as a form of relics?
GC: I think so, but they’re definitely more for me. I think I was making work for other people before, but I wanted to use hair because I knew the people it was coming from. I write a lot about it, how using it changes its form. Sometimes it doesn’t look like hair, it’s separate from a person.
VB: Is there a piece that really shows that?
GC: I think the token piece. They could be something other than hair. For example something that’s felted. And it's just a quarter-sized thing. It’s harder to tell that it’s some specific person that you know. I want it to be huge, as big as a wall.
VB: Well that’s exciting that it’ll keep growing over time as you make more and display them.
GC: Everything is very time based. I majored in film and video which is a time medium, but I don’t think I'm going to make films anymore, but I’m still working with time. I’m waiting for people’s hair to grow.
VB: And for people’s hair to arrive.
GC: Exactly. I could buy hair but it doesn’t feel as natural to me.
VB: You’ve been living in Boston after moving there for college and it’s become your home, how does that play into what takes you forward as you do more art?
GC: I'm inspired by the idea that we do not live in a society that appreciates closeness. Conversations are typically very casual. Most of my friends who I don't see as often anymore talk to me through Instagram and through memes, which works for certain people. Most of them say that’s how they feel close, but it’s not how I feel close. I’m grasping onto whatever form of closeness I can have in my art through that, while I'm living through this situation. I can’t go and destroy capitalism to make it better, but I sure wish!
VB: Do you feel your idea of closeness has evolved as you’ve grown?
GC: I think I've always been someone who appreciates closeness. If I’m friends with you it’s trust in the fact that you’ll be with me and have my back in a situation. Just stepping up in any capacity you can. But it’s definitely matured. From the high school idea of “Oh I'll stay up all night and talk with you” to “I’ll get you groceries.” I think the pandemic has shifted my mentality more than moving away from Chicago. I just had big workaholic energy. That’s what you get for a straight “A” student. (laughs) But the pandemic changed it. I got sick around the beginning of the pandemic. I’m chronically ill, I have fibromyalgia. It’s very hard to have a capitalist mindset when you’re chronically ill. I always had these priorities of closeness, but they’ve definitely been highlighted and bolded and italicized after then.
VB: I was recently talking to a friend about the idea of community and the idea of a society. It has been changed as the stages of capitalism move forward. It makes it hard to use your own time.
GC: I’ve been writing letters to some friends who lived in Boston and moved away, and it’s been so nice! We draw art and mail it to each other with a little letter that says what we’ve been up to. The conversations that we have over mail are very different. Because if I mess up, I need to rewrite it, and it gives the other person time to respond whenever they’re ready. In that way I’ve been really against urgency.
VB: What media have you been interested in lately?
GC: Hmm, I don’t know. I feel like I haven’t been that involved in art as I would like to lately. Even the things I’ve been reading have been trash. (Laughs)
VB: What’s the trash?
GC: Well my friend let me borrow this book a year ago, and it’s the Twilight book from Edward’s perspective with it. When I was working with her two years ago now we would talk and joke about how bad it was, and she let me borrow it. But it was so bad that I’d stop reading every couple of pages, and then my cat peed on it.
VB: That’s a strong review.
GC: Yeah, a very strong review. (laughs) But I want to make it to where I finish it. So I'm finishing it and it’s bad. Stephanie Meyer needs to go to jail. Some parts are funny. It’s definitely a Wattpad book. Their dialogue is like “I’m gonna eat your tears because I can’t absorb liquid so it’ll be in me forever.” Other than that I’ve been into a lot of D&D. I’ve been listening to Not Another D&D Podcast. It's very fun storytelling and I can listen to it whenever I want. That’s what I’ve been enjoying, just D&D stuff.
VB: Well two things that are very comforting.