New portals unveiled inside House of Eternal Return

Three new permanent installations have emerged inside House of Eternal Return, including a collaboration with Native artist Virgil Ortiz and artists Lauren YS (Squidlicker) and Jacob Fisher.

“While the House of Eternal Return is a permanent exhibition, it is also a living, constantly changing exhibition,” said Susan Garbett, General Manager of House of Eternal Return.

“The House of Eternal Return is the perfect venue for these three new installations; welcoming artists that tap into the nature of infinity, dreams, ancestors, and the local Native landscape and people is a wonderful representation of our mission to instill imagination and play in our guests,” Garbett continued.

“In the case of Ortiz’s work, history serves as a powerful lens for examining ourselves creatively, changing course, and improving how we value art and artists. Fisher’s work brings us the opportunity to find peace in the present, and Squidlicker’s installation is a space of deep ancestral acceptance of the liminal. All of these combine to make some of the most powerful experiences we have offered yet.”

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Virgil Ortiz

Virgil Ortiz uses his art to tell stories of the future and reflect on the past, fusing his Pueblo culture with sci-fi, fantasy, and apocalyptic themes.

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Ortiz’s new installation at House of Eternal Return is titled Sirens: Secret Passkeys & Portals and features a cast of characters from his Revolt 1680/2180 saga—an ongoing project Ortiz has been working on for the past two decades. Revolt 1680/2180 is the vision of a dys­topian future 500 years after the Pueblo Revolt in which time-travelers return to the era to aid their ancestors.

“The freedom to touch, feel, take pictures, and explore an immersive installation opens up many possibilities,” said Ortiz. “It has challenged me to adapt to the idea of having people interact with the displays, decode patterns, listen to the soundtrack, and wander around it all.”

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Lauren YS

Lauren YS, aka Squidlicker, is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work is influenced by dreams, mythology, death, comics, love, sex, psychedelia, animation, and their Asian-American heritage. Their installation, a two-story room accessed through a round portal from the forest, is entitled The Ancestral Crypt.

‍The room has a sense of being underground, existing somewhere that feels both futuristic and ancient, with design centered on a neo-Asian feel mixed in with alien, futuristic, western, and psychedelic influences.

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“This space is meant to act as a haven for fluidity: a temple to the liminal, to bring into materiality a space for that which defies absolution. An homage to the queer, to the nonbinary, to the shifting, monstrous and in-process,” said Lauren YS.

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Jacob Fisher

New York-based artist Jacob Fisher creates his large-scale installations through a “highly repetitive and obsessive” process that allows for introspection and escape while creating.

You can find Fisher’s installation, until I see you again, in the depths of the exhibition space shrouding Space Sphere, the giant interstellar traveling ball.

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“As you enter the installation, shape, structure, color, detail, and light grasp your attention,” said Fisher. “My hope is that, for a moment, in this odd, beautiful world, you forget your efforts to order the chaos of the everyday. For a moment, you are filled with tranquility.”

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