Life After Dead Air brings together artists working with moving images to explore corporeal reality in a digital age. Though their practices differ, each artist centers the tensions of living in an age of uncertainty. With common themes of nostalgia and novelty, the works in the show approach these tensions with curiosity and joy. Together, they show how culture continues in the ruins of media infrastructure.
Hosted with the support of the PASEO Project, and in partnership with the Taos Film Festival, the exhibition runs at the Taos Center for the Arts in Taos, New Mexico from April 23-26, 2026. The opening reception is April 23 at 4:00 PM.
Installations
God and the Others
Artist: Dusty Deen
Medium, materials, and final measurements: Digital installation: Dual-channel video on 34" monitors, mixed media
Description: A kinetic reimagining of the novel God and the Others. This oversized "book" functions as a digital palimpsest, where the original text is consumed by a frantic, stream-of-consciousness intervention. Through raw sketches and frantic animations, the work transforms a static narrative into a living monologue.
What I Keep to Myself
Artist: Jacklyn Le
Medium, materials, and final measurements: 1.5 in x 2 in; Materials: TinyTV, hair
Description: "What I Keep to Myself" is a reflection self-portrait through trichotillomania. This 10-second stop motion explores the psychological and emotional complexities of self-mutilation as a coping mechanism. This tiny frame zooms in and out to show the impulsiveness that feeds these urges. It portrays internal struggles to seek control and relief from her environment, despite outcomes. Jacklyn invites you to reflect on how we often conceal our vulnerabilities.
Operate: Play Now
Artist: Jacklyn Le
Medium, materials, and final measurements: 9 in x 15 in; Materials: ceramics, cardstock, battery kit
Description: "Operate: Play Now" is a game based on Jacklyn's experience with Hodgkin's lymphoma. It goes through her cancer journey with hospital visits, bloodwork, biopsies, chemo, and more. Inspired by popular TV, like Grey's Anatomy, it puts viewers into the shoes of the doctor operating on a test subject. Unlike the traditional Operation game, the goal is not to gain money through procedures. Winning means paying attention to your body and knowing when it is time to seek help. The stressful process of each visit being another co-pay or out-of-pocket cost adds to the complicated nature that cancer patients often face.
deep inside
Artist: R. Barela
Medium, materials, and final measurements: Pine wood, LCD display, polymer clay, acrylic paint, digital media player, latex
Description: deep inside presents itself first as something familiar, an angel carved from pine in a traditional Spanish colonial style. However, the chest is opened, revealing a more raw interior: a ribcage and a suspended heart. Within the heart, a small screen displays two rabbits, at times affectionate and at times in conflict, moving through a quiet, dreamlike loop. The work explores the tension between what is outwardly presented and what is held within.
Tower of Cower III
Artists: Alonso Indacochea and Becca Elbrecht
Medium, materials, and final measurements: Aluminum, pressure board, CRT televisions, e-waste; 8 ft height x 8 ft width
Description: Tower of Cower III brings together vintage CRT and LED televisions in a stacked screen sculpture: some on, some dark, some stuck on dead air, all ringed by the debris of electronic waste. The tower asks what carries on after a system collapses. Its ruined televisions and discarded circuitry point to the disintegration of older infrastructures of production, transmission, and spectatorship, yet the spirit of human creativity remains. Local filmmaking appears not as an industry upheld by stable institutions, but as a collective practice sustained through care, resourcefulness, and mutual aid.
cut girl
Artist: Julianne Aguilar
Medium, materials, and final measurements: Wall-mounted monitors hooked up to computers, connected to Wi-Fi, and displaying the live websites
Description: cut girl is a browser-based work about the ecstasy of being cut open fourteen times, and the bewildering agony of long-term, unresolved illness. Who is this girl who has been cut so many times? I once knew a hot girl; where did she go?
blood smoke wind rain
Artist: Adrian Pijoan
Medium, materials, and final measurements: Four channel video, dimensions variable, 7:30, 2026
Description: Adrian Pijoan was the New Mexico Arts artist in residence at the Sandia Mountain Natural History Center in Cedar Crest, New Mexico during March and April 2026. He filmed blood smoke wind rain during that residency. This is an early version, or rough cut, of the work started during the residency. The work envisions the forest's dreams and nightmares through the four titular elements as dream archetypes.
Hum Devotional
Artists: Helen Atkins and Will Geusz
Medium, materials, and final measurements: Handmade ceramic mosaic, digital illustration printed on KODAK Photo Tex Repositionable Fabric, disassembled computer speakers and fairy lights, audio artwork; 31 in x 18 in each
Description: Hum Devotional is a multidisciplinary installation that draws connections between the divine and the mundane. The digital illustrations and mosaics reference the aesthetics of awe in Christendom, but center domestic and secular ritual. Embedded in the triptych is an audio and lightscape artwork that samples sound from the artists' respective social media algorithms. The sound is transformed and distorted to evoke meditative and sacred spaces. The ambient light is a direct translation of the sound waves. The installation both questions and exalts ceremonial and everyday ritual.
Behind the scenes
