A red structure was built and left standing. A dense field of wicker—around two thousand flexible rods—forming a fragile labyrinth. A space to enter, to navigate, to get lost in.
Then, an interruption. Time passes. The action arrives later.
Wearing an exaggerated bata de cola, the performer re-enters the work. Blindfolded by a transparent strip, he begins to move through the red forest.
The body is no longer the same. Without fully seeing, he advances. The long train follows, drags, accumulates force. What begins as movement becomes impact. What touches, bends. What bends, collapses. The structure gives way.
The bata de cola—associated with control, elegance, and femininity—turns into an unstable extension of the body: excessive, unpredictable, impossible to fully manage. The work unfolds as a negotiation between body and structure, between what was built and what remains possible.
Charged with autobiographical tension, (+bata) moves through questions of gender, fragility, and transformation—where identity appears not as a fixed form, but as something that insists, breaks, and reconfigures itself.
What remains is aftermath: a dismantled landscape, and a series of photographic images and a video (3’35”) that register the action.
(+bata) from Miguel Melgares on Vimeo.
Installation: approx. 2,000 wicker rods fixed to the floor with red modelling clay, (approx. 50 m²)
Performance: 10 minutes
Photographic series: 4 prints (80 × 30 cm each)
Video documentation: 3’35”
Performance: 10 minutes
Photographic series: 4 prints (80 × 30 cm each)
Video documentation: 3’35”