Lukas Avendaño: Bardaje
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.
Lukas Avendaño is a performance artist, choreographer and anthropologist from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. He works on the intersection between gender, ethnicity, race, body and violence in Mexico through performance, intervention and activism in communities. His performance work explores roots and experiences, such as muxes identity and gender roles.
In Avendaño’s words, “it is an invitation for the audience to become sensitive to the symbols and signs around them—those that flow through our everyday lives, in each moment. We just have to find the connection to that ancestral thought; only then does a new epistemology emerge—one that redefines how we understand and live life.”
Lukas has also used his platform as an activist to bring attention to the crisis of enforced disappearances in Mexico, a phenomenon that has affected approximately 110,000 people to date, including his brother Bruno.
Organiser of Lukas Avendaño: Bardaje
This ticket grants access to Lukas Avendaño: Bardaje on Friday 17th October 2025
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