Nicholas Robles (b.1997 Cincinnati, OH) has developed a research-based art practice exploring his familial lineage as it falls on multiple sides of the Columbian Exchange, which brought ideas, goods, weapons, and peoples across the Atlantic for profits. His practice grapples with this colonial inheritance through metals, ceramics, and found objects. His sculptures recontextualizes history as it has been told, and considers how history gets written for the future.

If you did not think they could talk / Try not giving a knife to a cock is a sculptural assemblage of weaponized utensils orbiting painted scenes of the masculinity promenade of cockfighting. The piece explores the colonial heritage of this killing of animals for sport as it gained popularity in Spanish colonies. Utensils have gaffs welded to them, sharp blades strapped to the birds’ legs as men let their cock proxy prove themselves the strongest. Abstracted dinnerware plates display a life cycle of a cock, highlighting the ephemeral nature of feelings of dominance and performance.