A Constant State of Becoming Exhibition: Interview with the Artist. Justina Leston.
After being part of A Constant State of Becoming exhibition, curated by Marcela Villanueva, Justina Leston reflects on her art in an interview with Myriam Martínez.
How do you define yourself?
If I define myself based on my degree or my profession, I’m a graphic designer and photographer. However, I’m someone with a strong curiosity, who wants to continue learning new things. I’ve studied printmaking and ceramics, drawing and some painting too. Although my artistic side is primarily focused on photography, I’m letting myself be influenced more by those other aspects.
You can see it in your latest work, “Meine Liebe Jus”, exhibited at Bardo as part of “A Constant State of Becoming”.
Yes, with the paintings. And it’s also the first time I’ve shown photos that I didn’t take myself, but rather photos from the internet that my father sent me. I’d been working on it for a while, but behind closed doors. I also have another project, about my grandmother and Alzheimer, for which I’m making a video, ceramics, and collages. photography is also the main focus of this work — the archive of family albums in relation to texts my grandmother wrote to exercise her memory, but again, these aren’t my own photos.
“Meine Liebe Jus” is composed of digital photos and texts, both extracted from Eduardo Leston’s e-mails, her father. With some paintings, gouache on canvas 15 x 20 cm, the artwork was born because when their cat died, it was the first time Justina saw her father cry. “Since I moved to Berlin, he started an email exchange with me, sharing deeply personal thoughts and feelings. Almost every email came with an attachment: a photo of a kitten”.
So, is your creative process changing?
What I like to do is to tell stories, which often have to do with my experience — always with a bit of fiction, obviously —. And I usually discover these stories once I’ve gathered a certain corpus of images, and that’s when I start the editing work. Sometimes I come up with a more concrete idea for making pictures, but that’s not the norm.
In “Who Spies on Us” there is a mixture of things, on the one hand there are the texts that narrate what happened to me, real and concrete facts, then there is the body of photos that I took in various countries over several years, and there are also more performative photos, with the wigs and the found slides…All these materials begin to dialogue and are put at the service of the story.
Something similar happens with the work on my grandmother. When I found her personal diary, I thought it was incredible material, and then I started to find and gather the rest. Elements emerge and I connect them. There is something about the process that is respected, let’s say it’s not so different from before. The biggest difference is in the media and the artistic disciplines I use to show it.
One of the mediums you’ve already explored, in “Who Spies on Us”, is the photobook. Are you considering doing it again?
Yes, I love photobooks and books in general, and I’m also drawn to them as a designer. I definitely think I’ll continue exploring this medium — I hope so —, although I wouldn’t dedicate as much time to it as I did the first time. “Who Spies on Us” is a project that started in 2016 and was printed and published in 2023 by Metaninfas. It took many years, millions of layouts, hours of editing, different formats — smaller, larger, more complex, simpler — until I got pregnant and said: “Okay, this is the deadline. I have to print it before Elías is born because otherwise, I’ll never do it”.
In the case of “Meine Liebe Jus”, I decided to make a simpler and more accessible format, and I think the fanzine format fit it very well. I was very happy to have it ready together with the exhibition and to have been able to present it there
You’ve mentioned that the birth of your son gave your art a boost.
Being an artist has its own challenges, and so does motherhood, but in a way, with so little time, you suddenly feel like you have to make the most of every free second. A new routine is created — you’re more tired, it’s true —, but for me it’s been a boost. Since I’m spending more time at home, I’ve been finding moments to produce that I used to dedicate to other things. I painted the cats in “Meine Liebe Jus” and worked on the ceramics while Elías slept, for example.
This isn’t the first time you’ve exhibited alongside some of the other artists who are part of “A Constant State of Becoming”.
Yes, Delfina and Lucía and I did an exhibition a few years ago at HilbertRaum, “Dreieck,” and we curated it ourselves. It was all very self-directed, a very beautiful experience. So for us, it was great that Marcela invited us to create this exhibition for Bardo, not only because we all liked the space, but also because of the opportunity to collaborate again, with them and the others, in a predominantly Latinx environment.
Everything came about in a very collaborative way.
Yes, we had already been collaborating with each other. It’s been a while since we met and shared our work processes, concerns, doubts, etc., and it was very nice to be able to make this exhibition together.
I think this exhibition has been a little challenge for all of us, either to generate new works or to show something totally unexpected. We jumped in to see what would happen. Marcela suggested the Bardo as a place for experimentation, for rehearsal, and that allowed us to explore further and take risks.
What do you hope for your future as an artist?
For now, I am really enjoying the process of creation; I am having a lot of fun with my work, with what I do. On the opening day it was wonderful to share with friends, with the community, and to see that there were people moved to tears with my work. I want to continue working, showing my work, building new bonds and being surprised with what may come.
Myriam Martínez
