The Crossbowman
Performance

Josep Renau Hall, Faculty of Fine Arts of Valencia
Curator: Elías Pérez
Photography: Eduardo Tobar
Link to video
July 2, 2026

“The Crossbowman” proposes a circular structure, articulated around a gesture of appearance and disappearance. At the centre of the room, a mechanical bird hidden beneath a bag is revealed and set in motion. Its flight accompanies the material fragmentation of the Romance of the Prisoner: the verses, written on individual pieces of cardboard, are shown to the audience and thrown onto the floor. The poem becomes a sequence of scattered objects that each spectator must put back in order.

The action culminates, symmetrically, in the central motif of the ballad: the death of the little bird at the hands of the crossbowman. The piece does not depict that violence: it suggests it. The bird is covered once more and its song falls silent. This return to the initial state closes a cycle that, in repeating itself, turns the performance into a reflection on betrayal, death and loss.

Romance of the Prisoner (anonymous, traditional)
It was in May, in May,
when the heat comes on,
when the wheat shoots up
and the fields are in flower,
when the lark sings
and the nightingale answers,
when lovers
go to serve love,
but I, sad and wretched,
live in this prison,
not knowing when it is day
nor when the nights are,
save for a little bird
that sang to me at dawn.
A crossbowman killed it for me;
may God repay him ill.