Portrait by Velvet D’Amour
About JC Candanedo
“It's not as if I have different bodies of work, I think I just have many fronts. It's almost like being in drag. I'm in a different drag persona as needed.” Félix González-Torres, 1993.
I am a Queer, Catalan-Panamanian multidisciplinary artist and photographer based in the UK, moving fluidly between forms, roles, and contexts as needed. Like stepping into different personas, my practice shapeshifts across photography, mixed media, performance, and socially engaged work—each iteration responding to the urgency of the moment, the needs of the community, or the call of a shared struggle.
Rather than fixed bodies of work, I navigate many fronts: exploring identity, migration, and displacement; building spaces for connection and solidarity; and inviting others into acts of collective making and reflection. My practice is both personal and communal, investigative and supportive, activist and artistic.
I serve as Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees at Axis, am a Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts, and contribute to multiple working groups and advisory boards across the UK’s cultural sector. I'm also the Co-Founder of Noria Collective, alongside Sandy Abdelrahman—a network of socially engaged artists amplifying Global Majority voices in the diaspora through cultural production, programming, and consultancy.
My work grows and changes all the time, but always returns to one central aim: to embed social purpose in creativity and use the arts as a tool for making the world a better place.
If you have a project you'd like to discuss, or any questions you would like to ask, just get in touch. I'd love to hear from you!
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