{"id":100750,"date":"2026-01-05T17:53:41","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T00:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=100750"},"modified":"2026-01-05T17:53:41","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T00:53:41","slug":"altered-states-in-the-acid-west-at-umoca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/altered-states-in-the-acid-west-at-umoca\/","title":{"rendered":"Altered States in the Acid West at UMOCA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>SALT LAKE CITY
\nJanuary 16 \u2013 June 6, 2026<\/p>\n

Opening Celebration: <\/strong>Friday, January 16, 2026, 6-9 pm<\/p>\n

Altered States<\/i>\u00a0draws from the acid western genre that emerged in the 1970s alongside countercultural movements and a growing distrust of inherited histories. These films upended the familiar language of the Western\u2014its heroes, landscapes, and myths\u2014through surreal imagery, psychedelia, and spiritual inquiry. Instead of presenting the West as a place of destiny or conquest, acid westerns depict it as unstable terrain: disorienting, visionary, and charged with meaning beyond what can be easily named.<\/p>\n

For generations, the American West has been imagined and reimagined as many things at once: a promised land full of Manifest Destiny; a symbol of rugged individualism; a site of paranormal speculation; and a resource to be conquered, extracted, and consumed.\u00a0Altered States<\/i>\u00a0in the Acid West\u00a0<\/i>examines these layered projections, asking how they were built, why they persist, and framing the West\u00a0as a complex site of encounters\u2014between people and land, belief and myth, and the visible and unseen.<\/p>\n

The exhibition\u00a0also grapples with the deeper histories embedded in the region: the impacts of colonization, racial violence, and cultural erasure. These legacies are not relics of the past, but human experiences that continue to shape the political and social realities of the West today. Vast, sparsely populated landscapes have allowed isolation and extremism to flourish; simultaneously, these places draw spiritual seekers and fuel enduring mythologies that mirror America\u2019s past and present.<\/p>\n

Bringing together Indigenous practices, cultural and spiritual traditions, histories of extraction, and critical re-readings of Western lore,\u00a0Altered States<\/i>\u00a0invites viewers to sit with contradiction, uncertainty, and possibility\u2014\u00a0to consider what the American West has been, and what it might still become.<\/p>\n

Featured Artists<\/h2>\n

Ileana Alarc\u00f3n
\nJanna Avner
\nWill Bruno
\nPhillip Cash Cash (Nez Perce, Cayuse)
\nPaula Castillo
\nRussel Albert Daniels
\nDrew Dodge
\nJim Frazer
\nJuly Guzman
\nLevi Jackson
\nJim Mangan
\nDaryl Celeste Meador
\nDiego Medina
\nMart\u00edn Nu\u00f1ez
\nSarah M. Rodriguez
\nJonathan Ryan
\nShelby Shadwell
\nRick Silva
\nGilmore Scott
\nMargaret R. Thompson
\nDani Tull
\nJose Villalobos
\nEmmi Whitehorse<\/p>\n

Utah Museum of Contemporary Art<\/a>
\n20 S. West Temple
\nSalt Lake City, UT 84101
\n801-328-4201<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SALT LAKE CITY January 16 \u2013 June 6, 2026 Opening Celebration: Friday, January 16, 2026, 6-9 pm Altered States\u00a0draws from the acid western genre that emerged in the 1970s alongside countercultural movements and a growing distrust of inherited histories. These films upended the familiar language of the Western\u2014its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":100751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibitions","category-salt_lake_area"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/dani_tull.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-06-07 17:51:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100752,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100750\/revisions\/100752"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}