His works cover a variety of artistic media, including painting, drawing, video, photography, object assemblages and digital art.

[3] Cárdenas was one of the ten artists invited by then Crown Princess, HM Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands for a series of cultural soirees at the Drakesteijn Castle in 1969.

[4] His performance was called "Symphony for seven waiters", and it also included Prince Claus, Wim Beeren, Marinus Boezem, Ad Dekkers, Jan Dibbets and Peter Struycken.

The director of the Stedelijk Museum, Wim Beeren wrote into the exhibition catalog: In 1990 Cárdenas won the third prize at the First Triennial of Painting, in Osaka, Japan.

He created a large and varied body of video work that explores many themes including sexuality, desire and his own Latin American heritage.

His videos range in approach from the grayscale real-time style typical of early 1970s recorded performances to elaborate narratives and montages that make use of more advanced editing techniques.

Cárdenas' works often involve elements of campy humor, including frequent parodies of the masochistic attitude that some performance artists have towards their bodies.