JC Candanedo - Interview

JC Candanedo is a queer artist, photographer and mentor, with Panamanian and EU citizenship. He has lived in Panama, Catalonia, the USA and Australia, he currently lives in the UK with his husband.

JC's Portrait

When I asked JC about his perception of home, he gave a very deep and extensive response, exploring the relationship between home, safety, discrimination, community and belonging. He described how he had sought the feeling of home by migrating in his early life, only to be made to feel like he never quite fitted in anywhere. He has since found community and belonging in the creative industries:

• “The idea of home – what does that even mean? What we consider home differs depending on whether you have stayed all your life in the same place, in your community, or if you have travelled around the world. It’s a very personal question.”

• “Home has varied throughout my life. Home was very unsafe for me when I was growing up as a queer teenager in Central America in the ‘80s. So, I didn’t find that feeling of home in my parent’s house.”

• “At times in Panama, being from an immigrant family, in a positive discriminatory way we always felt that we weren’t from there, in this subtle way which didn’t seem racist – because in Latin America if you come from a European background – you’re almost treated as a first-class citizen, so it was a positive discrimination. But there was that feeling that people didn’t recognize my accent – and I felt that my place was not there. I felt that my place would be on the other side of the ocean – I went to Barcelona speaking the language and with all my papers in order because I have dual nationality, understanding the culture, the food, the traditions. I went there feeling like I have finally arrived home, but that only lasted for a few days or weeks and it was soon clear to me that people didn’t consider me from there and that I was a foreigner - I had a Latin American accent and I was a third-class citizen. Everyone was constantly telling me you’re not from here.”

• “I’m not Panamanian enough, I’m not Catalan enough, I’m not white enough in some places, I’m not brown enough in other places. It’s a very charged question and very difficult to answer.”

• “I have those stereotypical Panamanians in my life – my friends and relatives - and I don’t fit that definition. Then when I am in Catalonia, I always have to apologise for not being 100% Catalan – I always have to explain my mixed heritage, because I see it in their faces that they are struggling with my accent.”

• “I have been very fortunate to be an artist, and the creative industries seem to be very inclusive by definition, all the outcasts and the weirdos and the geeks and the freaks, we always gravitate towards each other, and this is what forms this beautiful industry and I have always felt welcomed, with open arms and nobody really cared where I was from or what language I spoke.”

When describing his identity and personality, JC emphasized the fluidity of his ethnicity, his support for representation of minorities and his efforts to continuously reflect and develop:

• “Identity is not a monolith and we all inhabit so many different identities at the same time, so it is difficult to answer that question with one answer. I have started self-identifying as a queer, immigrant and visual artist. I do it from a political stance because I feel that young, queer people need to see that representation. I also want people to know that I am a migrant, because the idea of being a migrant has been demonised so much.”

• “Some days I can feel 100% Catalan, other days I can feel 100% Panamanian, sometimes 5% and 95% - it just depends and it’s very fluid.”

• “I like to think that I am open and friendly, and non-judgmental - which is a very difficult thing to say because we are all full of prejudices. I tend to be someone who self-examines quite a lot - the type of person who is their own worst enemy because I am always criticising myself. I self-assess every day; Is this the right thing to do? Am I a good person? Am I part of the problem? Trying to modify my actions accordingly.”

• “Usually, other people tell you how you appear to them and I’ve been described as annoyingly optimistic.”

  
  

JC has experienced many incidents of discriminatory behaviour throughout his life, due to his ethnicity, accent and sexuality. He highlighted his shock when these incidents occurred and the long-term psychological impact of these experiences:

• “I’m a 50 year-old, queer immigrant living in London, of course I have experienced prejudice, cruelty and discrimination.”

• “The incident that is in my head, which has been very triggering with the race riots happening since the weekend, happened here in South London, like a decade ago. I was volunteering for a charity which works with vulnerable young people, helping to keep them off the streets and they needed someone to come and take photos. It was all going well until I came out of the venue, a group of people approached me and yelled that me and my family should go back to where I come from. For a few days I told the story in a really comedic way, but then later on, it has stayed in my brain as something really awful and threatening and in the past few days the memory has come back and has been very pressing in my mind. I don’t even have to open my mouth for people to know that I am not from here. That was around the time of the Brexit referendum. I didn’t think at the time that this anti-European sentiment would also be so aggressively obviously anti-European immigration.”

• “When I lived in Catalonia, when I was 25, I had a job and at some point the owners of the company called me to the office to thank me and give me a really good review about my performance and to tell me very openly and honestly that they wouldn’t let me answer the phone because they didn’t want their clients to know that they had a Latin-American person working in the office. At the time, I was looking for somewhere to live, but I couldn’t find a room, and they said that they thought the reason was my accent. So, we did a test – we took a number from the newspaper and we both rang one after the other and they gave him a viewing, but not me.”

• “Only one person has asked me since the race riots started, how I am coping with it. I think that our white friends see us as white immigrants, whereas the general British public doesn’t consider us as white. And people of colour don’t see us as people of colour and they see us as “white-passing”, so they also think that we are not affected. So we are in this limbo where a lot of people from mixed heritages live. I’m obviously not going to take the place of a person of colour, or a black person but I am for sure not-white and not British. So, where do we fit?”

JC described how his early experiences influenced his closeness to Catalan culture, whilst his upbringing in Panama has given him a sense of belonging to the broader Latin American community. He felt like he most fits in the queer community and the diaspora community (regardless of other’s country of origin):

• “I have struggled with my queer identity, so I found community in my chosen family – the queer community, that’s where I’ve felt like I fit in.”

• “I feel really close to the Catalonia culture because that is how I was raised – my household was a Catalan household even though my Dad is Panamanian. We always did everything with my Mum’s family and everything we ate, spoke and celebrated, it was always through a Catalan lens – so that is the community I felt closest to for the majority of my life.”

• “Then I came to London, this whole identity has resurfaced beyond just being Panamanian, it’s about being part of a broader Latin American community.”

• “I feel closer to the diaspora identity, regardless of where you are from originally. I think that in the diaspora, we live in a parallel reality, because if we go back to the places where we are originally from, we don't fit there anymore. I feel the closest to the diaspora community, they are my people, and it doesn't matter where they are from.”

JC reluctantly called art his passion, whilst emphasizing his motivation to help others who have shared experiences of discrimination:

• “That’s the cliché question and the cliche answer would be art, because art sort of rules my life and guides everything I do.”

• “Helping and supporting other people in any way I can. When I am mentoring, or even when I am creating my own work, I am exploring what could help other people understand the struggles of certain communities or even help themselves. My passion is to help others, to make the world a more comfortable place for everyone. if I can contribute to making someone feeling more welcome, not discriminated upon, feeling that they belong, that would make my day.’

JC chose the colours of the Catalan independence flag for his portrait along with his signature colour of Black:

• “I spent the last decade wearing black just because of the work that I do. The other day, someone saw a photo of me at an event, wearing a yellow T-shirt, and they messaged me on WhatsApp to say they were so happy to see me wearing yellow - that's the extent of how much black I wear.

• “I identify more with the Catalan independence flag, which has white and blue apart from the red and yellow. It doesn't pinpoint me, but at the same time, it's four colors that I can identify with. If you added black to that palette, it would look like a Mola. It's a traditional, textile work from indigenous people in Panama. It usually has these four colors, even though they can incorporate other colors as well, but they're all framed with black.”

• “I like this idea of the iridescent, a spectrum. We spoke about that annoyingly optimistic personality that I seem to have. I think that optimism is white, the concept of light, that is the combination of all the colors.”

JC came up with an unusual concept for his flag, he asked for his identity to be symbolized as a creature comprised of multiple different animal parts:

• “Any mythological creature, that has the head of something, the tail of something else, the feet of something, and the body of something else would represent me. It's the mix and match of all these different things that we've discussed today - that will be my mythological creature.”

• “Dolphins are the most elevated animals in the animal kingdom, as well as octopi. Am I only mentioning aquatic animals? Panama's bird is the Harpy Eagle, and Catalonia's mythical creature is the St George's dragon.”

JC's flag

Read all of my 'Kaleidentity' interviews on my blog.