The words bardaje, bardash, and berdash have been used since the 18th century to describe Indigenous homosexual identities across the Americas.
Their roots trace a lineage through Italian (bardascia), Arabic (bardaj), and Persian (barah), marking a long history of dissent from dominant ontologies and epistemologies, those imposed from the global north onto the global south.
In Zapotec culture, a muxhe is often described as a man who embraces roles traditionally associated with women, though this identity exists outside Western gender binaries. Lukas Avendaño describes muxeidad as a third gender, a category that disrupts colonial frameworks of sex and gender. This is the ground from which Bardaje rises, a performance in which Avendaño moves in attire embroidered with ayoyotes, ancestral musical seeds that rattle with each step, and a large, colourful headdress.
Bardaje explores Avendaño’s reflection on muxeidad, sexuality, eroticism and the tensions that exist around it. The work invites us into a sensorial encounter with the archaeology of memory and matrilineality, where feathers, metallic paper, ayoyotl, gold and silver become the sacred and profane tools of resistance.
:::
Presented by Take Me Somewhere 2025.