Speech Patterns marks the next chapter in Caballero’s investigation of voice, form and translation, evolving her explorations of performance-driven materiality. Radical Repair, the very first work from this new series, uses digital and artisanal tooling to visualize a performative presentation given by the artist during Berlin Art Week.
In her previous performance-based series, Paperwork, audience reactions to her poetry readings were translated into digital and physical paper sculptures, each representing one individual’s experience of her verse. Caballero turned these reactions into raw material, using audience members’ handwritten responses to actuate compositions from latent space that represented the relationship between speaker and listener.
With Speech Patterns, she looks upstream: the words she prepares for her performances become the originating material. Here, her scripts give rise to sculptures, both digital and physical, that materialise live performance in three-dimensional form. The relationship shifts: where the audience’s reactions once determined structure, now the performer’s internal speech architecture becomes the generator.
Caballero’s Speech Patterns are not born from interpretation but from intent. In doing so, the work investigates the tension between preparation and spontaneity, the script and the utterance, the body of words and the event of voice.
Ultimately, Speech Patterns reconsiders performance beyond the moment of delivery, translating it into structured potential. The sculpture becomes both archive and proposition: a speech-act frozen into shape.
Through this transformation, Caballero asks: what happens when the words we hope to speak become the marrow of art? How can we faithfully represent the transition from script to utterance, from intention to articulation, as embodied form?
Three editions of Speech Patterns will be presented at Art Brussels, visualizing a trilingual performance Caballero delivered at the Venice Biennale in 2025. Each of the three works represents the reading of a poem in a different language: English, Spanish and Italian
Speech Patters will also be present at Art Basel Zero 10, where Caballero will present a multi-dimensional installation showing all the ways a poem can materialize in the digital age.
Dimensions:
3D printed physical sculpture, hand-painted and detailed
80 h x 50 w cms
Base: Aluminum
Figure: Hand-molded Polystyrene by Colombian artisans
Double coat of paint with a matte finish
Tokenized digital twin
