Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart concept has existed in various forms for more than a decade, but ideas surrounding the cult of shopping and the emotional manipulation that occurs in grocery store aisles hit differently today. We have the choice and the freedom to reengage with ourselves and the world around us, to remind us that we have the capacity to create infinite beauty and change.” Don’t forget yourself.’ That’s the crucial thing to take away. “We have these signs in Omega Mart where it’s like, ‘Attention shoppers! Did you forget something? Don’t forget the ice. “It’s all about reinventing the mundane spaces and trying to get you to reengage with a sense of curiosity and possibility to remember to wonder,” Montoya says. That may be an oversimplification, and a relatively direct message for Las Vegas, but the wide-angled Meow Wolf Omega Mart look - part Andy Warhol, part childhood cartoons and part retro monster-movie aesthetics (pay close attention to the piñatas modeled after the seven deadly sins) - is meant to welcome us, and then unravel until we no longer have a clear sense of place. Fridges storing drinks become winding passageways, T-shirt racks give way to hedge mazes, and soon we’re in multistory rock canyons with projected imagery, glass that seems to come alive with animation and corporate factories with robot receptionists.Īll of it taken together, for those who want to dig deep, is designed to have us think about who we are in relation to the brands and the corporations that seek to define us and our environment. The Omega Mart is modeled to look like a typical grocery store, only here a deli contains a block of cheese molded after Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” and others are designed to capture more religious imagery. Then it perceives you as having a face.”Īnd in a weird, unintentional way, it may even better serve the Omega Mart message, a place that fuses old-fashioned illusions with modern tech to get us out of our own heads. You hold up a ping-pong paddle with the lower half of a face printed on it, and then it works. “We were like, ‘Are we taking this out? Can we fix the programming?’ We came up with an analog solution. “If you’re wearing a face mask, it doesn’t perceive you as having a face,” says Emily Montoya, one of Meow Wolf’s cofounders and Omega Mart creative director. Then came the pandemicĬOVID-19 put a pause on Meow Wolf’s most ambitious, risk-taking and topical endeavor yet: the grocery store-inspired Omega Mart, planned for Las Vegas. Entertainment & Arts Meow Wolf was set to transform themed entertainment in Vegas and beyond.
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