2000 yrs ago....
The distance the wind travels, 2024, video performance, 00:09:59, Video documentation by Tova Katzman.
The Tiger and the Spigot Future Forward / 2026 / Performance / 01:00:00 / With Leo Briggs, featuring Venese Alcantar Sofie Cardinal, Tommy Heath, Aída Hernandez-Reyes, Sam Mandelbaum, J Pansa, Micah Senter, and Joshua Winn / Photo by Phoebe Shuman-Goodier / OUTsider Fest, Austin, TX.
Signs and cue cards guide performers and audience in a dance of courage and vulnerability—a survival strategy for things to come.
00:07:30, Video documentation by Tova Katzman
A history of everything / 2026 / Installation; drawings, screenprints, and risographs, cut-out photographs, a mop, a mop bucket, a level, two hammers, two scissors, three red solo cups, extension cords, paper bags, tissue papers, towels, blankets, shirts, and wood / 20'×8'×7'
To fold onto one's self / 2026 / wax crayons and colored pencils on paper /
A history of everything / 2026 / video performance / 00:05:00 / Bunker Projects, Pittsburgh, PA
I play a red toy harmonica; the wind joins and every thing follows.
A Body Without Organs //
Installation / October 2025 - January 2026 / Industrial cage trailer, paper-mache, fabric, ropes, thread, pool noodles, wire, plastic, wood, porcelain, PVC tubes, pulleys, sound tubes, and bells / 20'×8'×7' / Cage Match Project: Round 25 / The Museum of Human Achievement / Austin, TX
Performance / October 7 + October 15, 2025 / Part 1 and Part 2 / With Leo Briggs, featuring Venese Alcantar, Angel Blanco, and Katherine Vaughn / 00:45:00 Photos by Aryel Rene Jackson /
Fleshy knotted fabrics, intestinal ropes, plastic, wooden bones weaving in and out of the metal gridded form. An industrial caged-trailer transforms into a cartoon body. Periodically activated, exposed to the elements, and under 24-hour public viewership, the body is made and unmade. In two public activations, performers and audiences moved in, out, and around the living body, investigating boundaries between self and other.
Part 1 and Part 2 / October 7 + October 15, 2025 / With Leo Briggs, featuring Venese Alcantar, Angel Blanco, and Katherine Vaughn / 00:45:00
Performers and audiences moved in, out, and around a living body, investigating boundaries between self and other.
00:01:30 / Video documentation by Tova Katzman.
The Tiger and the Spigot consider the Stars
Installation/ April - May 2025 / drawings, prints, paintings, sculptures, found objects, performance documentation, and other ephemera / 12' x 12' x 28' / The Visual Arts Center, Austin, TX. / Photo documentation by Alex Boschenstein
Performance / Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 / 2025 / 00:45:00 / With Leo Briggs, featuring Venese Alcantar, Angel Blanco, Sofie Cardinal, Emily Heath, Aída Hernandez-Reyes, Sam Mandelbaum, Micah Senter, Katherine Vaughn, and Joshua Winn / The Cohen New Works Festival 2025, Austin, TX. / Photos by Phoebe Shuman-Goodier
The Tiger and the Spigot consider the Stars is a collaborative practice of play. Sometimes, it happens in public and an audience witnesses. We build and enact a world shaped by desire and the collective—by our erotic and political imaginations.
Holding the Sun / 2025 / Cut-out monotypes, paper-mache, tape, rope, wood, wood, a plastic chain, and a yellow belt.
The Spigot / 2024 / Paper-mache, fabric, foam, wire, and aluminum foil /27" x 33" x 12" / Photo by Tova Katzman / On the way back from Lamesa, TX
Dubious bodies of water / 2025 / Gouache on paper; wood, thread, clothespins, and broom head / 42in x 40in
The Tiger and the Spigot consider the Stars / 2025 / Performance / 00:45:00 / With Leo Briggs, featuring Venese Alcantar, Angel Blanco, Sofie Cardinal, Emily Heath, Aída Hernandez-Reyes, Sam Mandelbaum, Micah Senter, Katherine Vaughn, and Joshua Winn / Photo by Phoebe Shuman-Goodier / The Cohen New Works Festival 2025, Austin, TX.
The Tiger and the Spigot consider the Stars is a collaborative practice of play. Sometimes, it happens in public and an audience witnesses. We build and enact a world shaped by desire and the collective—by our erotic and political imaginations.
A spirit in flight, 2024, fresco, earth pigments and plaster on drywall
Fearlessness is fearlessness / 2024 / Pastel on paper
No I, no here, no now, 2024, monotype installation
Dust to dust, 2024, Porcelain clay and monotypes
A second skin, 2024, Monotype
Bare bones, 2024, porcelain clay
You Are Here, 2023, a pop-up solo-show, Williamstown, MA
Collection of weapons found in the empty lot next to my house, 2022, sticks, metal, twine, colored pencils on rocks, paper, and a fly
Nowhere, 2021, hand-sewn quilt, 82” x 92”
(about)
Javier Robelo engages play as a world-making practice. Drawing from Latin American and queer histories of image-making, craft, and performance, he renders a colorful cartoon cosmology. With interactive sculptures, he activates space and emotions; the beings in the world he creates feel and are felt.
Javier has an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Art History and Studio from Williams College. He was an artist-in-residence at Bunker Projects (Pittsburgh, PA) and Cage Match Project at The Museum of Human Achievement (Austin, TX) and has exhibited his work at The Williams College Museum of Art (Williamstown, MA), The Joseph Gross Gallery at the University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), and the Visual Arts Center (Austin, TX). He teaches at the University of Texas at Austin.
Photo by Phoebe Shuman-Goodier