Coco Capitán took something of a risk when it came to her home. The Spanish multidisciplinary artist made an offer to rent the red brick Victorian conversion in east London without seeing it in person. “My assistant came to a viewing while I was in Japan,” she says.
“He called me and said ‘You have to put in an offer; if you don’t do it now, it will be gone’.” After a few frenetic phone calls and an array of forensically detailed videos, she took the leap. “Renting in this city can be so crazy,” she adds. “You have to move fast.” It paid off; she has now been here for two years.
Capitán has a warm and tranquil ease — one that carries through in the intimate air of her images, part of a career that spans art and fashion. She had moved to the UK in her late teens to study photography, first at the London College of Fashion and then the Royal College of Art. She consulted friends on where to live, and moved between an array of East End properties as her career began to take off.
Now, she is best-known for her intimate, pared-back images — both photographs and paintings; the incorporation of her idiosyncratic, naive scrawl into both has become a signature. Over the years she has photographed figures including actors Cate Blanchett, Emma Corrin and Kyle MacLachlan; exhibited around the globe in Seoul’s Daelim Museum, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris and Tokyo’s Parco Museum, among others; created her own line of clothing, Capitana; and collaborated with Gucci, Dior and APC. She also makes films and writes.
It is easy to see why Capitán was so enamoured with this house. Spread across three floors, it has generous proportions — a legacy from its original function as a workshop — and is filled with the kind of careful stylistic detailing one does not always find in a rental property. An expansive open-plan kitchen with polished concrete floors leads to a secluded courtyard stocked with well-established ferns and fatsias, where her two cats are often found roaming.
Thanks to an unusually relaxed arrangement with her landlords, she has been able to paint several rooms and install bespoke cabinetry and shelving. “I really love my landlords,” she says. “Most people wouldn’t go to this length to make the place so nice.” For her part, “I like being comfortable where I am, so I don’t mind investing a little bit myself.”
Although Capitán loves the buzz of London, she describes her home as a sanctuary. Inside, it feels like a world away from the busy thoroughfare that connects Dalston and Stoke Newington.
Finding spaces to pause and rest is a theme that has inspired her recent collaboration with August, a company that specialises in high-end holiday properties with a distinctive co-ownership model: a collective of around 20 buyers owns between three and five properties as a group. She has created artworks for each of the three-bedroom pieds-à-terre, in Paris, London, Rome, Cannes, and Barcelona, calling the collection Arcadia. The pieces include a photograph of the sea in the Cannes home and, for the London location, an oil painting of children singing.
Capitán did briefly own a property of her own in Mallorca. She bought a derelict house during the pandemic with the intent of embarking on a full restoration, but ultimately the task proved too great. “I was overwhelmed,” she says. “Luckily, because I bought from friends, I basically just gave it back.” As the world opened up again, she felt the pull of her adopted city once more.
“I love the multicultural nature of the area,” she says. “I grew up in the south of Spain, where there is no cultural mix. Here there are lots of religions and cultures, you have synagogues and churches and mosques and people live alongside each other in a way that feels quite respectful. That feels especially important right now.”
When I visit, gentle jazz emanates from a record player in the corner of the kitchen, while a conical Alessi kettle gurgles. The spaces here are carefully delineated; the ground floor is reserved for hosting and any “mundane pleasures” that might inspire her work, such as reading and playing the piano. The extended attic is reserved for sleeping, while two bedrooms on the middle floor are dedicated to work. One is filled with neatly labelled archive boxes and photo-editing equipment; the other is for drawing and small-scale painting.
For anything messier, Capitán sublets a studio from a fellow artist for a limited period of time. “Maintaining an external studio feels like too much pressure,” she says. “I spend a lot of time working from home but that means I have to have designated zones. You’ll never see me on my laptop in bed.”
Yet clues to her practice can be found everywhere. Model boats and books reveal a life-long obsession with sailing that often seeps into her work (even her tobacco tin has a nautical theme). Among a vibrant collection of fiction and non-fiction, stacks of vintage Japanese photobooks fill multiple shelves and are a reference for her own compositional framing and subject matter.
But there is also a kind of starkness to the rooms — for while sources of inspiration are important to have all around her, so is space. Not just physical space, but space to think. “Not enough is said about how important it is [for creativity] to do nothing,” she says. “That might be sitting in the garden and enjoying the sun, or having a shower. That’s when the ideas come. You need to allow for that space.”
A favourite perch is an unusually shaped, handcrafted lounger, despite having something of the dentist’s chair about it. Capitán has no idea who made it. Like many of her pieces, it was bought online from a second-hand dealer and has no special provenance.
In many ways it reflects her broader approach to interiors and her own art, which marries a gentle irreverence and a dash of the absurd with a sense of community. As we wander around the house, she gestures to the various items sourced by her friend, interior designer Charlotte Taylor, including a strangely beautiful angular antique chess set. It forms the centrepiece of the sitting room, which is furnished with a pair of low sofas and Isamu Noguchi paper lamps.
What otherwise leans towards an austere modernist aesthetic is softened by Capitán’s eclectic collecting. The books on interior design are flanked by coronation mugs (she has a kitsch predilection for the royals), vintage badges and homoerotic magazines titled Physique Pictorial. This late 20th-century periodical has become an icon of queer aesthetics, not least because it featured illustrations by cult artist Tom of Finland.
“There are also a lot of artist swaps in this house,” she says, pointing out a sketch of Prince William by Silvia Prada hanging on a studio wall and a wobbly candlestick by James Shaw on the kitchen island.
Allusions to Spanish rustic style and culture fulfils her quest for “cosy spaces, where you can truly feel at home”. A diminutive pair of traditional chairs surround the kitchen’s wood-burning stove, while a three-legged stool is covered in smatterings of fallen candle wax.
A recent exhibition at Maximillian William in Fitzrovia brought something of the artist’s eclecticism to the gallery. Titled Studio Debris, it featured assortments of polaroids, unframed images and scribbled notes jotted on hotel stationery. The show’s subtitle and mantra could well define Capitán’s whole practice, one nurtured by home: A bit of everything, a lot of nothing.
Find out about our latest stories first — follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
