UNTITLED
My name is JC Candanedo, UK-based Queer Multidisciplinary Artist. In my piece Untitled, I reflect on how when we are exposed to archives or historic documents, we never really see a complete picture of how the past developed. Not every historical record has survived to our days, and even those that did could be incomplete, obscured, censored or deliberately written from just one perspective.
What’s more, the way we approach history is biased according to our own backgrounds, perspectives or agendas. The history that we are exposed to is often told from only one perspective. What about the history of those who didn’t have a voice? Or those whose voices were not considered relevant enough to be recorded? What about oral traditions, often considered primitive but containing the greatest amount of historical records in existence?
I made this piece as a way of explaining the experience I had of going back in history to read documents and chronicles searching for information on the plants, people, and places in the areas where the botanicals that I use in my practice where extracted. There comes a point in time when I can’t go further back because the information is not available.
