Hidden Histories is a guerrilla public artwork created by media artist Nahab as part of the paraSpaces residency at Arebyte gallery.
Following the rise to prominence of the conversations surrounding Britain’s statuary during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, it became clear that much of London’s statuary lacks any information which might give it historical context. Anyone wishing to understand the place of these figures in history is forced to search for their own information online. However, it has become increasingly clear over the last few years that the act of ‘doing your own research’ is highly susceptible to misinformation and propaganda, and that following even one wrong source can lead to a rabbit hole of information, which only corroborates itself.
The Hidden Histories project aims to take the uncertainty out of this, by doing your own research for you.
Each time a visitor loads a page for a landmark the entry pulls a randomly selected article from wikipedia and replaces its subject with the monument in question, producing entities which range from the nonsensical or surreal, to the unnervingly plausible.
The ultimate aim of this project is to alter how we perceive historical records, not as singular immutable facts, but as multiple, layered and living stories, which are continually being retold. History is a tool which serves a purpose, often this purpose is to justify and legitimise power. The same mechanisms which enable the spread of fake-news might also empower marginalised communities to wield the tool of history to their own betterment. This is not to erase history, or bury the past, but to recontextualise it and retell it in ways that do work for us in the present.