Departing from the photographic document, Pedro Barbáchano’s practice interrogates the historical document. Through photography and digital processes, he materializes images and proposes experimental methods to document veiled histories and invisible bodies. His lived experience establishes Spain, Egypt and Canada as cardinal points. In his work, museums and cultural landmarks are central and appear as discursive spaces that employ archeology and historical narratives as instruments for domination or profit before knowledge. He appropriates these instruments to respond to archival absences and gaps. By speculating and imagining alternative histories, he displaces the museum’s historiographical agency and bestows this authority upon those who have been refused it. The past is a raw material that he refers to, scrutinizes, and reactivates. He combines photographs, objects, archive materials and sculptures to fabricate traces, recontextualize relics, and disturb historiographical myths.
Pedro Barbáchano is an artist working in Montreal and Cairo, Egypt. His photographic and sculptural practice interrogates the historical document and the representation of subaltern bodies. Barbáchano is the recipient of multiple awards and has been funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. His work has been featured in public art exhibitions, publications and exhibitions across Canada, Spain and Egypt. He is currently pursuing an MFA and has lectured at Concordia University.
