ROUND 25 | A Body Without Organs
11/15/2025 – January 2026
Opening Reception – Saturday, November 15th, 5-8 pm
Performance Part 1: November 7th , 7:30 pm
Performance Part 2: November 15th, 6pm
Performance Part 3: January 10th, time tbd
Round 25: A Body Without Organs reimagines the cage as a living organism, animated through playful interactions between people, objects, and landscape. Acts of touching, ripping, tying, making, and unmaking transform everyday materials: bedsheets become flesh, ropes turn into guts, and plastic and wooden bones weave in and out of the rigid gridded metal form. Robelo investigates the porous boundaries between self and other, how our surroundings impress upon us, and how we, in turn, ooze back into them.
The cartoon body, with its ability to stretch, contort, pull apart, and come back together, serves as a metaphor for queer being. It imagines a self that bends, breaks, melts into others, and extends into the world through continual transformation. Performers will activate the installation as a labyrinthine playground, collaboratively reflecting on the fluid nature of being, within and beyond the limits of the body.
Performances organized in collaboration with Leo Briggs, featuring Venese Alcantar, Angel Blanco, and Katherine Vaughn.
Javier Robelo, from Managua, Nicaragua, uses sculpture and performance to explore queer identity and experience. Working with paper-mâché, fabric, and tape, he creates forms that look both familiar and strange, inviting people to touch, dance with, and pull them apart. These works come to life through interaction, turning into collaborators in participatory events that question social norms and highlight the possibilities of change. By working closely with others and with materials, Javier looks for beauty in what is overlooked and freedom in the feeling of not belonging.
Javier received a BA from Williams College and an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. His work has been exhibited at the Williams College Museum of Art, the Joseph Gross Gallery at the University of Arizona (Phoenix, AZ), the Visual Arts Center, Ivester Contemporary, and the Cohen New Works Festival (Austin, TX). He currently makes, teaches, and performs in Austin, Texas.
Round 25: A Body Without Organs by Javier Robelo is presented as part of Cage Match Project’s 2025 Input/Output (I/O) Residency, a program dedicated to supporting emerging artists working in installation and spatial storytelling. This project is supported in part by the City of Austin Economic Development Department. Stay tuned for the next application cycle. The program is open to recent graduates and upper-level undergraduates in Central Texas, with a focus on supporting Queer, BIPOC, gender-nonconforming, and female artists. Learn more and apply through the “Open Calls” tab on our website available in english y en español.