Lukas Avendaño

Calling me an artist is a bit of an error, as I have always sought to imagine that “other possible world.” I only desire peace; I only strive to generate dialogues where our phenotypic, sexual, and gender identities, our symbolic, economic, cultural, or social capital are not obstacles to knowing one another, embracing one another, being moved, and loving one another. In walking under the shadow of “art,” I continually find that our pains are the same, and from this place I share the stage, dance, the performing arts, and life itself. I frequently question whether this is what makes me an artist.

Lukas Avendaño is a performer and dancer who uses anthropology as a tool to examine sexuality, gender, and ethnicity within performance. She approaches these subjects through reflection and insubordination—an approach she describes as an “archaeology of memory” or “forensic archaeology.” Avendaño’s work has been characterized as disobedient militancy, sexual dissidence, rural folklore, “travesti” (a term for a gender-dissident identity) improvisation, and “Art Nako”(art that refuses to behave)—asking to be uncomfortable, ugly, loud, or excessive to expose power, violence, and exclusion. For her, these characterizations reveal a hegemonic narrative built from “the thesis with a systemic flaw at its origin,” reinforcing the idea that her very existence is conceived as a story of collateral damage resulting from an epistemic and ontological “original flaw.” Her performances range from participatory public actions to choreographed, multimedia works and are consistently rooted in political engagement.

Avendaño’s longest running piece, Buscando a Bruno, is a public performance and “strategic litigation” that premiered at the Consulate of Mexico in Barcelona, Spain, in 2018. Buscando a Bruno exposes Mexico’s “forced disappearances” through a personal quest to find her own brother. The performance, a durational work, foregrounds the individual and political dimensions of absence by staging two chairs side by side: one used by Avendaño, cradling a photograph of her brother, and the other left empty to be inhabited by others who share the wound and come to sit in solidarity. The work confronts state violence and impunity, while an active search for truth and justice takes place. It has since been presented at public sites and museums including Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City (2018) and Museo de Arte Moderno, Oaxaca (2018).

Avendaño’s work has been shown globally, including at Pabellón Escénico INBAL, Mexico City, Mexico (2025); Sandrell Rivers Theater, Miami, FL (2024); The United Theater on Broadway, Los Angeles, CA (2024); RE/BIRTH Festival at DE SINGEL, Antwerp, Belgium (2024); Holland Festival, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam (ITA), Amsterdam, Netherlands (2023); and Kampnagel (k6 Hall), Hamburg, Germany (2022); among others.

Avendaño was a member of the prestigious Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte of the Sistema de Apoyos a la Creación y Proyectos Culturales (SACPC), Mexico (2021-2023). She has received a commission from LACMA Art + Technology Lab, Los Angeles, CA (2021) and was awarded the Travesías Escénicas Award by Barro Rojo Arte Escénica in Mexico (2021). Avendaño was honored by the Compañía Danza Universitaria during the University of Costa Rica’s annual [ ] Paréntesis Espacio de Danza Festival (2021), and received the Premio a la Identidad Indígena at FICWALMAPU in Temuco, Chile (2020).

Avendaño holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Universidad Veracruzana in Veracruz, Mexico (1998-2002). Following studies in dance while in Veracruz in the early 2000s, she completed one year of the Specialization in Dance Creation at the Centro de Investigación Coreográfica (CICO-INBA) in Mexico City (2006-07), and artist–educator training from National Dance Institute (NDI) in New York, NY (2008).