Meow Wolf
How 200 artists are transforming retail space with art via installations, virtual and augmented reality, music, performance, and storytelling
Meow Wolf is a Santa Fe-based artist collective that is really good at creating places that transport audiences of all ages into fantastic realms of story and exploration.
Meow Wolf’s first permanent location, House of Eternal Return, is a wildly imaginative immersive complex where art becomes everything one sees, hears, and touches. Launched in 2016, the group transformed a former bowling alley into a multidimensional mystery house with secret passages, portals to magical worlds, climbing apparatus, and surreal, encompassing art exhibits. The building is also home to a children’s learning center, a popular music venue, and a cafe. Last year, Meow Wolf temporarily took over an abandoned motel in Las Vegas and produced 21 unique and otherworldly rooms with doors leading to other sensory dimensions, cloud spaces, endless somber corridors, and a room made of human-sized ramen.
Meow Wolf is opening a new exhibit at a hybrid mall called AREA15 in Las Vegas. Meow Wolf will occupy 50,000 square feet of the 126,000-square-foot retail space which puts the emphasis on the mall as an immersive, experiential destination. Currently, the artists are also working to open a 60,000-square-feet space in Denver.
Sources: Meow Wolf｜Archinect News (September 25, 2017) | Denver Post (January 4, 2018) | Image: Laura Pittaccio