Meow Wolf’s New Houston Exhibition Is an Otherworldly Tour Through America’s Most Diverse City

One of the staples of a Meow Wolf installation is a “retail district,” usually a narrow, winding walkway filled with absurd riffs on consumerism and capitalism. (Expect a fish ATM.) At Radio Tave that includes a small arcade with four original games made by independent game designers like Cassie McQuater and Strange Scaffold. This arcade is the latest extension of the “Undermaller” culture that has become a regular part of Meow Wolf’s exhibits. This ‘80s-indebted mash-up of games, graffiti, hip-hop and extreme body modification has appeared at several Meow Wolf locations, and it’s one of the recurring motifs that Meow Wolf regulars will find throughout Radio Tave. 

Part of the company’s overarching narrative—told quietly through methods like the repeated appearance of Undermallers—is that all of these places reside in the same dimension. So ETNL exists in the same nether realm as Omega Mart in Vegas or the House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe. Meow Wolf doesn’t really hammer down on that point, though; if guests realize it, that’s fine, but it’s not explicitly spelled out. That’s how Meow Wolf tells the stories of these immersive spaces; each one has its own carefully crafted narrative, but after the initial premise of a radio station (or grocery store, or train station) opening up into a different universe, it lets that narrative exist in the background, like the ambient noise you’ll hear throughout Radio Tave. If you take the time to read various materials spread around ETNL’s office, or to pick up one of its phones and call the numbers in its phone directory, you’ll learn more about its characters and how they feel about being trapped in this weird place. That’s completely optional, though, and honestly it’s unclear how much exploring those stories will increase one’s appreciation of a Meow Wolf space. It’s cool that those stories are here, that there’s more to Meow Wolf than simply trippy sounds and visuals, but you don’t need to know why those environmental instruments in the grand chamber exist to be awed by them—and the wonder and mystery of it all could suffer with explanations or too many details. Still, if you are the type who loves to follow breadcrumbs and scrounge for story details—the type to read every single note and listen to every possible conversation in a Mass Effect or Dragon Age game, or who actually loved reading the footnotes in Infinite Jest—then you might relish trying to uncover Radio Tave’s story. 

Although its team is based in Santa Fe, Meow Wolf makes a point to work with local artists whenever they build one of their permanent exhibits. You’ll see and hear Houston artists throughout Radio Tave, from the murals on the walls and hallways between its major setpieces, to some of the music on the jukebox in its dive bar Cowboix Hevven. (It serves good cocktails, cold beer, food like Frito pies and fried bologna sandwiches, and is an absolutely perfect recreation of a local dive, but with the otherworldly flourishes you’d expect from Meow Wolf; we’ll have a separate piece on Cowboix Hevven soon.) There’s even a room that’s basically Houston remade as a hallway, painted with local landmarks, sports logos, and depictions of pivotal Houston artists and hip-hop musicians, with chopped and screwed sounds blaring out of passing car windows on the soundtrack. Meow Wolf has received some criticism in the past for insufficient support of local artists, and it’s probably a little disappointing for a proud, thriving arts scene to see the biggest rooms and most impressive spaces in Radio Tave done by Meow Wolf’s in-house creatives instead of locals. But you’ll find Houston and Southeast Texas art throughout the installation, demonstrating the unprecedentedly diverse lattice of cultures and backgrounds that makes Houston so vital. 

The fact is very few organizations or art collectives can do what Meow Wolf does. The combination of artistic inspiration, complex technology, and pure money required to build something like Radio Tave essentially restricts Meow Wolf’s competition to major theme park players like Disney Imagineering and Universal Creative, and given how everything those groups build these days has to tie in to a movie or TV show, it’s questionable how inspired their “art” actually is anymore. Meow Wolf has the resources and name recognition to just parachute into a community with its team of Santa Fe-based creatives and make no outreach at all, but that wouldn’t just hurt their reputation with local artists; it would also deeply hurt their installations, depriving them of the distinct identity and regional character that makes each one worth visiting. Without local artists Meow Wolf would have way less soul, which is crucial to both good art and tourist destinations.

Fortunately, Radio Tave won’t let you forget that you’re in Texas—or that there’s way more to Texas than the stereotypical cowboys and country music. Houston graffiti and street art legend Mario Enrique Figueroa, Jr.—aka GONZO247—was Meow Wolf’s Artist Liaison for this project, and he ensured that the city’s diversity courses throughout Radio Tave. You’ll see it in the work of Loc Huynh, whose psychedelic mural of what he lovingly calls Swamp Town evokes the region’s thriving Vietnamese population. Jasmine Zelaya, whose parents came from Honduras, fills her room with wall-sized portraits of her Honduran-American sisters set to steel guitar music; Royal Sumikat reimagines the queens of a tarot deck through the lens of her Filipino culture. El Franco Lee II gives us the glory of that Houston-centric hallway mentioned above, and elsewhere in Radio Tave you can hear the music of Fat Tony, born in Houston to Nigerian immigrants. Like all Meow Wolf projects, Radio Tave might immerse you in an unknown and unknowable elsewhere, but most importantly you’ll be immersed in the one-of-a-kind multicultural kaleidoscope of Houston the whole time.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, and more. He’s also on Twitter @grmartin.