The distance the wind travels, 2024, performance, 00:09:59, Video documentation by Tova Katzman.
2000 yrs ago....
The Tiger and the Spigot Future Forward //
Performance / February 22, 2026 / 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 / OUTsider Fest, Austin, TX / Photos by Phoebe Shuman-Goodier /
The Tiger and The Spigot sing a song of courage and vulnerability—a survival strategy for things to come.
00:07:30, Video documentation by Tova Katzman
A History of Everything //
Installation / 2026 / 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' / Bunker Projects / Pittsburgh, PA
To fold onto one's self / 2026 / wax crayons and colored pencils on paper /
A history of everything //
video performance / 2026 / 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 /
Red knotted fabrics, intestinal ropes, and plastic, wooden bones weave in and out of the metal gridded form. An industrial caged-trailer transforms into a living 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 porous flesh vessel, 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 / April 8 + April 10 + April 11, 2025 / Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 / 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 constellation of things and collaborative practice of play. At its center are a paper-mache Tiger and a Spigot made from aluminum foil. These are orbited by a flower, a horse, stars, cue cards, megaphones, radios, flags, and ladders. We gather on a patch of grass and improvise things into poetic choreographies. People flail, try hard, and stumble. Someone hides under a box. We feed each other fruit. Occasionally, someone reads from Larry Mitchell's 1977 The Faggots and Their Friends Between the Revolutions. Things come together and fall apart. 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.
Dubious bodies of water / 2025 / Gouache on paper; wood, thread, clothespins, and broom head / 42in x 40in
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
Fearlessness is fearlessness / 2024 / Pastel on paper
A spirit in flight, 2024, fresco, earth pigments and plaster on drywall
Dust to dust, 2024, Porcelain clay and monotypes
A second skin, 2024, Monotype
No I, no here, no now, 2024, monotype installation
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
Bare bones, 2024, porcelain clay
(about)
Javier Robelo is a Nicaraguan visual and performance artist. He engages play as a world-making practice. Drawing from Latin American and queer histories of image-making, craft, and performance, his work 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 holds 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).
Photo by Phoebe Shuman-Goodier