The wildly popular art collective-turned-entertainment company Meow Wolf has revealed the theme for its next immersive art installation.
The interactive display Convergence Station, which opens in Denver on September 17 (tickets go on sale today), comes with a multilayered origin story, as visitors have come to expect from Meow Wolf, which opened its House of Eternal Return exhibit in Santa Fe in 2016.
Convergence Station, so the story goes, was built on the site of a freak cosmic event by the Quantum Department of Transportation, or Q-DOT.
“Way back in 1994, pieces of four worlds from disparate universes and parallel galaxies converged,” Chadney Everett, the senior creative director for the Denver outpost, told Artnet News.
“In Denver, the Earth almost converged with them, which allowed the Q-DOT to build its first station on Earth to connect with these four worlds,” he said. “They hoped it would be its premier travel stop, but these memory storms started brewing. Q-DOT was concerned they might spread to other places on their lines, so they closed off all traffic to the converged worlds.”
Sofie Birkin, Daydreamers at Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station in Denver. Photo by Kennedy Cottrell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.
Through 79 artworks made by 120 local artists and 200 in-house creatives, visitors to Convergence Station will explore this intersection of worlds, which include a kaleidoscopic cathedral from an ice planet (borrowing the theme from Meow Wolf’s Kaleidoscape theme-park ride that opened in Denver in 2019), an underground catacomb civilization, the sanitation district from a city planet, and a mysterious six-dimensional organic being called Numina.
The economy of the converged worlds runs on memories because “when the worlds collided, everybody’s memories got jumbled in the process,” Everrett said. “These memory storms float through and occasionally disrupt people’s memories. It’s part of the great mysteries of these worlds that our guests are encouraged to come solve by engaging in the memory economy.”
The theme of four diverse worlds coming together was inspired in part by the Sun Valley neighborhood that Meow Wolf Denver calls home.
CataCombs at Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station in Denver. Photo by Kennedy Cottrell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.
“It’s the most diverse neighborhood in Denver, with immigrants from all over the world. The disability-rights movement was born here,” Everett explained. “All of that informed our work.”
Now that Meow Wolf is opening its third permanent location, there are hints that all of its projects exist in the same fictional universe. The Omega Mart that opened in February in Las Vegas, for instance, is run by a cyber-spiritual corporation called Dramcorp that uses technology to open portals to other worlds—could Q-DOT be one of their many subsidiaries?
“We do have some Easter eggs for Vegas in Denver, but I’ll leave those to be discovered,” Everett said. “Once we sell you a ticket, how you explore what we made is up to you.”
The space plans to incorporate new installations regularly, and to continue engaging with Denver artists on an ongoing basis.
“I like to talk about Meow Wolf’s work as creating incredibly ornate frames to hold other artist’s work,” Everett said.
See more photos of Convergence Station below.
C Street at Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station in Denver. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.
C Street at Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station in Denver. Photo by Kennedy Cottrell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.
Gremlin Symphony at Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station in Denver. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.
Ice World at Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station in Denver. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.
A character in the Library at Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station in Denver. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.
Ladies Fancywork Society, Midge Mom at Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station in Denver. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.