ANISSA CAMPOS | THE NAIL ARTIST. Social media catapults Anissa Campos to the red carpet.
VERY ACTIVE IN SOCIAL MEDIA, Anissa Campos, 22, is a nail artist working on the Southeast side of Chicago. While she was born in the United States and grew up in Chicago, both of her parents are from Mexico. Her mother is from Jalisco and her father is from Michoacán. Campos considers herself Chicana.
What inspired you to become an artist and to focus on nail art?
I get that question a lot. I’ve always been into art as a whole. Since I was a little kid, it’s been something that I gravitated toward. I always liked art in general, like drawing. Art class was the one class where I was like ‘You know, I got it.’ I just loved it.
I was at a university for two years and I didn’t feel it was the right path for me. I spent a while reflecting on what it is that I really want to do in life, and I guess it was just something that started off as a hobby for me in the beginning. It became something bigger than that, and it just bloomed into this.
How long have you been working as a nail artist?
Not that long. February 1 of 2022 was the day that I started.
What has it been like getting to work with big artists like Poppy and Omar Apollo especially since it’s so early in your career?
That was just so mind blowing because—I can’t even describe it. It’s just such a great feeling, especially because if you’re in a Mexican household anything having to do with art is not really taken seriously. It’s seen as a hobby and, ‘Oh, you can’t make a life out of this’. So, getting the opportunity to work with high profile clients, especially being a new nail artist, is super amazing.
I worked with Poppy, which was really cool. That was my first big client. Then going on to Omar Apollo, he had been one of my favorite artists ever, so it was just like full circle.
I met his parents during his performance, and his entire family were sitting there watching [it.] I remember that Omar talks about in one of his interviews how being in a Hispanic household, you need to move in your own direction—if you really want to figure out who you are. Because sometimes people can feel constricted when there’s people telling you, ‘You can’t do this,’ ‘That’s not gonna make you any money’ or ‘You’re not going to be successful.’
Do you feel your identity as a Chicana has influenced your art? How does your cultural background inspire your work?
I do nontraditional nail art. One of my cousins in Mexico does beautiful nail art; very traditional with the bright colors, the acrylic and then the coffin shape and the square shape and other embellishments like rhinestones and acrylic flowers. I love that style, but at the same time, I feel like I kind of moved in the other direction.
I found my own category. There are some super talented artists that I know from Mexico through social media that also do that same style. It’s so cool because they’re starting to mesh together. Here in the U.S. there are two different types of nails, funky and crazy, and the more traditional. In Mexico, you really only see the traditional but that there are artists that have that “different” style and starting to integrate that into the nail world: ‘Okay, maybe I can think outside the box and do this design even though it’s kind of weird and looks kind of funky.’
“Art was the one class where I was like ‘You know, I got it.’ I just loved it.“
How do you build your platform as an artist? I know you use social media. I found you on Tik Tok and then I jumped over to Instagram. How does that help you?
I have some other artists that I’m acquainted with in Chicago, like makeup artists. They always tell me, ‘You need to be on TikTok, I gained more on Tik Tok in such a short amount of time than I did on Instagram.’ Tik Tok is something that I’m afraid of sometimes. People on TikTok are so openly opinionated—even if it’s something that should be kept to yourself. I can definitely take constructive criticism, but I take things very personally. Nails are something that’s very personal to me. I guess I shouldn’t be taking things to heart.
I need to expand more on TikTok because, like you said, you found me through that app. Through that video that I made, I was like, ‘You know, if it has five views in an hour, I’m gonna delete this,’ but I left it. Then I woke up the next day and I had a few thousands and just kept going up and up to, 30k likes. That’s the most that I’ve had on that platform.
It made me think, ‘Maybe I should keep on being consistent on this app rather than on Instagram,’ even though I love Instagram.
A lot of people have a love-hate relationship with Instagram because it really is the algorithm versus the artist. Most of the time, especially on apps like Instagram where people have problems with it hiding their content and burying it. For me, I don’t want to say that I’m lucky because I do put a lot of work into what I do. I see that, ‘This is trending, okay, I need to hop on it right now if I want my account to grow,’ but I will say that the algorithm has treated me fairly well in terms of the amount of people that I’ve been able to reach so far in such a small amount of time.
I could expand to different platforms, maybe even Facebook. I feel like would expand my business and it is something that I am anxious about.
Growing up and working here, how has that shaped you as an individual and as an artist?
The artist world in Chicago is very close knit. Even if you don’t find someone from your scene, ethnic and cultural background you will find someone that you can definitely resonate with. I’m from the far Southeast side, and I think it’s like 80% Hispanic. Growing up here, and throughout high school, maybe even college it’s very easy to find people who share the same passions and who have this love for art.
What is probably the hardest part would be Mexican culture being very traditional, with the patriarchal family structure where the sister gets a role, the brother gets a role, the mother or father each have their own role to keep everything afloat. I feel because of that, there’s this strong sense of unity and family throughout the entire Latinx community. What we’re starting to realize now is that there can still be that unity without someone being bound or restricted within these social norms that usually the older generation is more accustomed to. A woman can be the breadwinner without her being labeled as ‘too masculine’ or a man can show his emotions without being labeled as ‘too feminine’. That actually unites us further, because we’re all able to feel the same way, do the same things and think the same way.
In Chicago, there’s so many creatives that probably have the same mindset as you, and like I said, same passions. There are so many artists, photographers, nail artists, just people that work in different media that you can bond with and create a relationship with.
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