a, 2021

Bondage of Passions offers a speculative vision of Catalina de Erauso, the so-called Lieutenant Nun. In the early 1600s, Erauso escaped convent life in the Basque Country and travelled to the New World, where s/he lived under several male identities and became a ruthless conquistador at the service of the Spanish Empire, obtaining the Pope’s blessing to pursue life as a man.

Larger than life and always on the move, Erauso adopted no less than five names and claimed many more lives before compiling their adventures into a memoir that is the stuff of legend. These voyages feature in the biggest tapestry. Woven on a Jacquard loom, this large-scale textile work has the hallucinatory quality of dreams, offering viewers a rare glimpse into the fears and desires of a contested figure that resists categorisation.

Next to it, a smaller tapestry conjures a feverish vision of colonial encounters. Its title, Abya Yala (in Guna language, “land in full bloom”), refers to a proposed alternative name for the Americas outside of European heritage, used among indigenous peoples. Both tapestries result from collaging archival imagery sourced from historical maps, etchings and colonial art. These feature valuable exports like indigo alongside syncretic motifs typical of Cusco School paintings, such as harquebusier angels armed with Spanish muskets.

These textiles are displayed in custom-built furniture inspired by the history of biombos, a luxury item that developed as an adaptation of Japanese screens in colonial Mexico. Contemporary to the time of Erauso, folding screens demarcate a space of semi-privacy within domestic interiors, creating a more fluid interplay between public and private, dressing and undressing, hiding and being seen.

Sculptures dotted around the space playfully dissect New Spain’s colonial fashion to reflect on the construction of gender and masculinity. Working closely with a cutting-edge laboratory for textile development, metallic yarns have been woven into knitted chainmail, which is then used to sculpt a soft and malleable armour. Exquisitely anachronistic, the costumes and garments combine Baroque style with glitter-drenched queer nightlife.

Assembled from leftover fabrics, an entire series of these sculptures is based on the codpiece, a fashion item that attaches to the crotch of men’s trousers and emphasises male genitalia as a visible sign of social status. Satirically titled On the Dignity of Codpieces —like the imaginary treatise quoted in Rabelais’s 1532 book Gargantua and Pantagruel—, it consists of a grotesque collection of bulging organs, ambiguously reminiscent of vaginal and phallic shapes, which extend into bondage restraints, straps and belts.

The installation is punctuated by vinyl scattered around the works. Acting as annotations within the show, these cut-up fragments reference the official reports (relaciones, in old Spanish) published by conquistadors. Reproduced in holographic vinyl, they acquire a phantasmagorical quality, providing an oblique commentary on the elusive nature of historical knowledge.