Deutsche Bank is the global lead partner of Frieze for the 23rd year running. This year, indeed, it will present a specially curated installation by Studio Lenca in its lounge at Frieze London and Frieze Masters. The work, moreover, draws on personal memory and the lived experience of migration, seen through the perspective of an artist who himself lived undocumented in the US, as a mixed Indigenous Central American migrant. Both fairs, meanwhile, held concurrently, run from 14 to 18 October 2026, in London’s Regent’s Park.
Studio Lenca
Behind the name Studio Lenca is José Campos, a Salvadoran artist living in the UK. He was born in 1986 in La Paz, El Salvador. As a child, he fled the country with his family to escape the civil war. Travelling through Guatemala and Mexico, he made it to the US border, growing up undocumented in San Francisco. He was the first member of his immediate family to attend university, first studying dance at the London Contemporary Dance School, before completing a master’s degree at Goldsmiths, University of London.
He chose the pseudonym Studio Lenca deliberately. The word “studio,” for him, stands for a space of constant transformation and experimentation. He doesn’t want his name to build a cult around one great artist, he sees himself instead as part of a collective voice. “Lenca,” meanwhile, refers directly to his Indigenous ancestors from eastern El Salvador.
His practice combines painting, photography, sculpture, performance and video, marked by a bold, saturated colour language. He originally focused on dance rather than visual art, something still visible today in the movement and choreography of the figures in his paintings. Today, he lives and works in Margate, at TKE Studios, owned by Tracey Emin. Carl Freedman Gallery represents him.
Earlier work
Among his standout projects is Leave to Remain (Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate, 2024), a major solo exhibition reflecting on the experience of migration and bureaucracy. Another is Chisme (Parrish Art Museum, 2023), an installation of fifteen life-size figures made in collaboration with low-wage immigrant workers. His work is also held in the collections of institutions including the Parrish Art Museum in New York and the Pérez Art Museum Miami.
Deutsche Bank and Frieze London: a long-standing artistic commitment
Twenty-three years of partnership with Frieze is part of Deutsche Bank’s broader arts programme. It also includes, for instance, its own Artist of the Year award, won this year by Slovak artist Lucia Tallová, whom we covered separately. The bank, moreover, runs its own cultural centre, PalaisPopulaire, in Berlin.
Part of this commitment is also the Frieze x Deutsche Bank Emerging Curators Fellowship, now in its sixth year. It offers a twelve-month, paid placement to a curator of Black or global majority heritage. The placement is embedded within a leading UK arts organisation. This year it moves to South London Gallery, which will receive a £45,000 grant covering the fellow’s salary, expenses, travel and research. The winning fellow will be announced during Frieze London 2026.
The wider context of Frieze London and Frieze Masters 2026
This year, nearly 300 galleries from 48 countries will take part across both fairs. Frieze London hosts 172 exhibitors, Frieze Masters, meanwhile, 138. New sections, notably, include The Code Universe, led by Carol Yinghua Lu, and Queering Modernism, a section devoted to twentieth-century queer narratives, led by Anke Kempkes.
Also freely open to the public is Frieze Sculpture, running from 16 September to 1 November in the English Gardens of Regent’s Park.
Kam a kedy
The Regent’s Park, London. Frieze London a Frieze Masters, 14 to 18 October 2026.
