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Meow Wolf is getting closer to unveiling its Los Angeles locale. When doors open — the company is targeting late 2026 — anticipate a walk-around, floor-to-ceiling experience that pays homage to the art of cinema with a sci-fi, psychedelic-like bent.

And to bring that vision to life, the Santa Fe, N.M.-based experiential art collective will be working with nearly 40 L.A. artists across multiple mediums. Expect more than a dozen sculptural and diorama artists to contribute, along with those who specialize in mixed media for interactive and video content. Local artists will also create a number of murals for the space, and a handful of artists have been chosen to curate their own life-size rooms in the venue at West L.A.’s Howard Hughes entertainment complex.

Artist Gabriela Ruiz will be contributing a major piece to Meow Wolf L.A.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

While the bulk of a Meow Wolf exhibition is envisioned and designed by a core in-house team in Santa Fe, the company partners with dozens of local artists in each city to ensure a local flavor. Here in Los Angeles, the task of curating L.A. artists fell heavily to Han Santana-Sayles. As a SoCal native from a Mexican American family, Santana-Sayles has told me, “I would be dishonored” if the exhibit failed in its mission to capture the breadth of the L.A. population.

“It’s really important to make that intentional,” Santana-Sayles said. “I’m not just going out and saying, ‘They have art I like. I’m going to bring them in.’ It’s a combination. Yes, they’re an amazing artist, and they have a really important story for this region.”

Santana-Sayles worked closely with art curator AJ Girard as Meow Wolf’s local art liaison. Girard has spoken of being inspired by everything from L.A.’s emphasis on social media to commercialism to graffiti art.

“Social media and social capital is so relevant in our city,” Girard said. “How do we make fun of it in an avant-garde, punk, radical way? How do we poke holes at it?”

Artists tapped to create full-scale rooms at Meow Wolf L.A. include Gabriela Ruiz, who crafted an adorably vibrant, multicolored insect that will serve as a periscope, and collective Everything Is Terrible, who described their space as featuring a “cartoony, root vegetable floating alien god.”

Also look for contributions from Compton’s Charles E. Dickson, a renowned self-taught sculpture artist, whose public works can be found throughout the region, including at Metro’s Mariposa Station and outside the California African American Museum, and Jen Stark, whose geometric kaleidoscope art flirts with the natural and the synthetic. Stark’s “Chromatic Cascade” is a staple of downtown’s Art’s District.

Lauren YS (a.k.a Squidlicker) is also tapped to have a room at Meow Wolf L.A., known for hyper-vivid colors and surrealist mythology. The artist currently has a piece in “Mythical Creatures: The Stories We Carry” at the USC Pacific Asia Museum.

Downtown L.A. street artist S.C. Mero will be contributing a sculpture piece to Meow Wolf L.A.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Others with exhibiting rooms include Wayne White, album artist, surrealist and puppeteer, perhaps best known for his work as the main puppet-maker for the children’s show “Pee-wee’s Playhouse; Seth Bogart, known best as a local musician (Hunx and his Punx); upcycled fashion specialist Corinne Loperfido; cartooney psychedelic artist Killer Acid; and longtime Meow Wolf contributor Nick Toll.

Meow Wolf L.A. lists seven artists as contributing either video installations and games to the space, including artist/musician Vinyl Williams and musician/animator Hugo Shiboski with director/media artist Will Wharton. Animators Réka Bucsi, Agnus Oakes and Cadmiumcoffee, as well as digitial artist Blake Kathryn will also contribute. It was previously announced that local animation house Titmouse would be supplying media for Meow Wolf L.A.

Six artists are slated to paint murals for Meow Wolf L.A. Look for work from Bunnie Reiss, Ozzie Juarez, Greg Ito, Harlen Hue, Evelyn Tan and Devin Reynolds.

Finally, more than a dozen L.A. artists are listed as contributing either sculptures or dioramas to the exhibition. Those artists range from downtown L.A. street artist S.C. Mero to multidisciplinary artist Ruben Ulises to former Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival contributor Sofia Enriquez.

Rounding out the list will be David Altmejd, Sharif Farrag, Joe Holliday, Nemo Gould, Alake Shilling, Elrod, Brooke Weston, Shrine, Hana Ward, Roberto Benavidez, Estevan Oriol, Wizard of Barge, Mike Chattem and Karla Ekaterine Canseco.

Meow Wolf helped define the modern immersive space. Since 2016, when the once-scrappy Meow Wolf opened Santa Fe’s “House of Eternal Return” exhibition, the company has welcomed about 10 million visitors across its four venues in locales such as Las Vegas, Denver, Houston and the Dallas suburbs.

For its upcoming Los Angeles venue, experiential art firm Meow Wolf will focus on the art of storytelling, with a specific eye toward spoofing our city’s moviemaking magic. To help bring that vision to life, Meow Wolf has entered into a creative partnership with Titmouse, one of L.A.’s most renowned independent animation houses.

The Hollywood-based studio behind popular series such as “Big Mouth” and “Star Trek: Lower Decks” will create animation that will be shown throughout the West L.A. venue, which is on target for a late 2026 opening at the Howard Hughes entertainment complex.

It’s a move that represents a shift for Santa Fe, N.M.-based Meow Wolf. Over the last decade-plus, the art collective has grown beyond its anything-goes, punk-meets-psychedelic roots into an organization with full-scale, maximalist installations in its hometown, Denver, Las Vegas, Houston and the Dallas suburbs. In the past, Meow Wolf kept most of its media in-house.

As part of its larger-than-life participatory art installations, Meow Wolf L.A. will feature a mix of live action and animation, the former filmed by Meow Wolf in its Santa Fe studio. Meow Wolf’s James Stephenson, a senior VP with the company and its creative director of emerging media, said the degree to which the L.A. exhibition will lean into various animation styles necessitated an outside partner. Titmouse’s work, in development by a number of directors with contrasting tones, will be shown on a variety of formats, ranging from cinema screens to full-room projections.

“I really believe in animation as an art form, and I know the Titmouse folks do too,” Stephenson says. “Animation is made by artists. It’s made by artists with their own hands. It’s something that is still very rooted in craft.”

Meow Wolf’s L.A. space is set in a former cinema complex, and will champion its location, taking guests on a journey through a converted movie house and beyond, into a sci-fi-inspired fantasyland with sentient spaceships and a 30-foot-tall mushroom tower. Meow Wolf creatives have spoken of the fantastical movie theater as one that will feature animated, self-aware candy before attendees enter the main exhibition space, making Titmouse’s work some of the first art guests will encounter. Titmouse co-founder Chris Prynoski has said the studio has lined up at least six directors for the exhibit.

An in-progress art installation destined for Meow Wolf L.A. at the art collective’s Santa Fe, N.M., headquarters. The L.A. exhibition will feature animation from Titmouse.

(Gabriela Campos / For The Times)

Titmouse, says Stephenson, is the right partner because “they’re known less for a house style, and more for a house vibe.” Over the years, Titmouse has been behind such diverse shows as “Scavengers Reign,” owning a Jean Giraud influence rooted in French and Spanish surrealism, the lively “Jentry Chau vs. the Underworld,” with an unique color palette that took inspiration from anime and Chinese mythology, the exaggerated comic book feel of Adult Swim’s “Metalocalypse,” and the approachable yet expressive tone of “Star Trek: Lower Decks.”

“Meow Wolf’s vibe is similar to Titmouse’s vibe,” Stephenson says. “It’s artist-first, artist-driven, independent and kinda edgy. They are always trying to find the edge of what’s possible. They try to see how far they can go, and it’s done for fun and in the spirit of taking risks.”

Prynoski says working with Meow Wolf will give Titmouse a sense of artistic freedom it doesn’t always have when delivering content for more traditional Hollywood partners. He says the multi-director approach is a callback to the early days of Warner Bros. Animation, when individual creators put their own stamp on Looney Tunes material.

“I use Bugs Bunny as an example,” Prynoski says. “You’ve got a Friz Freleng Bugs Bunny short. You’ve got a Chuck Jones Bugs Bunny short. You’ve got a Tex Avery Bugs Bunny short. They’re all different versions of Bugs Bunny, and people who are really paying attention can tell which director directed each one. Even though to the layman, these are all Bugs Bunny, but if you lined them up, they are drawing in different styles, sensibilities and techniques.”

Prynoski says that was a centerpiece of his pitch to Meow Wolf, noting that characters will reappear in multiple installations, each handled by a different artist. Meow Wolf L.A., in fact, will be the firm’s most character-driven exhibition, as guests will follow the storylines of three main protagonists throughout the space.

In announcing the partnership, Meow Wolf and Titmouse released an image from an animated work directed by Luca Vitale. It features a key character having a moment with a hummingbird and it’s done in an elegant, slightly anime-influenced style. It’s an image full of movement, reflecting a character in transition with inviting pastels and bold dashes.

“I like that image because I think it captures some of the sense of wonder that we want people to feel,” Stephenson says. “The character is having an encounter with the elusive nature of creativity and reality in a way that makes them have a different perspective of what’s possible.”

Other contributing animation directors to Meow Wolf L.A. include Space Dawg, Felix Colgrave, Alexander Vanderplank and Philémon Martin, and Jun Ioneda.

Titmouse’s partnership with Meow Wolf will extend beyond the L.A. exhibition. The two will be working on the development of Meow Wolf New York, which is slated to open some time after Los Angeles, and are collaborating on a planned animated series, which Prynoski is spearheading.

Meow Wolf exhibits are the result of sometimes hundreds of disparate artists coming together in a shared space. Distilling that into a signature, singular style for a series could be a challenge. Stephenson pinpoints some guiding principles.

“You really need to feel the hand of the artist,” he says. “You need to feel a DIY aesthetic. You need to feel the materiality. Those are very specific to what we are.”

Israel’s balancing act that allowed it to reap America’s unconditional and, often, blind support, while slowly benefiting from China’s growing economic influence and political prestige, is already floundering.

Thanks to the heated cold war between the US and Chinese economic superpowers, the Israeli strategy of playing both sides is unlikely to pay dividends in the long run.

Soon enough, Tel Aviv might find itself having to make a stark choice between Washington and Beijing.  When US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, visited Israel on May 13, two items topped his agenda: Israel’s imminent illegal annexation of Palestinian land and the growing Israeli-Chinese economic ties.

Pompeo communicated his country’s stand on both issues, reflecting Washington’s long-standing policies regarding Palestine and China. In the case of Palestine, as with the rest of the Middle East, Washington seems to adhere to Tel Aviv’s agenda, often to the letter.  China is a different story.

READ: China rejects Israel’s planned annexation of West Bank

Two significant historical examples come to mind: one, is Israel’s attempt to sell China Israeli-made Phalcon airborne radar system, which relied heavily on American technology in the 1990s; a similar event transpired in 2005, this time concerning Israel’s Harpy anti-radar missile. On both occasions, Israel succumbed to American pressure and canceled both deals.

For the Chinese, Israel matters for two different reasons. One, Israel is a strategic stop in China’s Belt and Road initiative, China’s most significant economic project to date, ultimately aimed at turning Beijing into a center of global trade and financial activities. Two, China is hoping to fight the US on its own political turf in the Middle East – partly in response to the American ‘pivot to Asia’ strategy, which was initiated by the Barack Obama administration.

But the world – in terms of political and economic balances of power – after the coronavirus pandemic is likely to prove a different one when compared with previous years. China’s rise has been in the making for many years and the US political retreat and declining global outreach has been quite evident for some time. The isolationist policies of the Donald Trump Administration, coupled with Washington’s many China-related tantrums in recent years, are all indicators of the vastly changing political realities of a once-unipolar world.

“I will not miss the opportunity to annex the West Bank”- Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

A few years ago, Beijing had the time, patience, and resources to play a long-drawn geopolitical game in order for it to challenge the US’s global influence, whether in South America, Africa, or Israel.

The visit by China’s Vice President, Wang Qishan, to Israel in 2018, to “boost business ties”, was part of this Chinese strategy. That visit followed the signing, one year earlier, of the China-Israel Innovative Comprehensive Partnership. As of 2018, China-Israel trade has jumped to $14 billion and has grown exponentially ever since.

China would have been happy to carry on with that strategy for many years to come. Israel, too, would have played along, considering the lucrative financial returns from its China partnership.

READ: Israel ties to China may risk our ability to work with Tel Aviv

Indeed, despite Washington’s warnings against and, at times, explicit demands on Israel to refrain from giving Chinese companies access to fifth-generation infrastructure (5G) projects in the country, Israel labored to make China feel welcomed.

However, the global response to the coronavirus pandemic is likely to change this, as it has already accelerated the cold war between the US and China, pushing the latter to adopt a more aggressive form of diplomacy and pour massive sums into other countries’ economies to help them in their desperate fight against the COVID-19 disease.

The Chinese strategy is predicated on two main pillars: fortifying existing ties and solidarity with China’s allies or potential allies anywhere in the world, while pushing back against China’s foes, especially those who are participating in Washington’s anti-Beijing campaign.

The latter phenomenon is known as ‘wolf warrior diplomacy’. The ‘wolf warriors’ are Chinese diplomats who have, for months, pushed back with unprecedented ferocity against what they perceive to be US and Western propaganda.

READ: China’s ambassador to Israel found dead in Tel Aviv home

“We never pick a fight or bully others,” China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, told reporters in Beijing on May 24, while explaining China’s novel approach to diplomacy. “We will push back against any deliberate insult, resolutely defend our national honor and dignity, and we will refute all groundless slander with facts,” the top Chinese official said firmly.

China’s new aggressive diplomacy, especially if it continues to define the country’s approach to foreign policy in the coming years, is unlikely to permit Israel to maintain its balancing act for much longer.

China’s ambassador to Israel, Du Wei, who was entrusted with implementing Beijing’s soft-diplomacy with Tel Aviv, died in his home only a few days following Pompeo’s visit to the country. Although Wei’s death was not – at least publicly – perceived to be the result of foul play, his absence, especially in the age of coronavirus and ‘wolf warriors’, might signal a shift in China’s approach to its economic and political interests in Israel.

On May 26, under American pressure, the Israeli Finance Ministry denied China a massive $1.5 billion desalination plant contract, awarding it to an Israeli company, instead.

This is the first time that the US has used its political and economic sway over Israel to curb Chinese influence in the country. China must be anxiously watching events unfold,   to see if US pressure on Israel will continue to undermine Beijing’s long-term strategy.

Deal of the century, embassy relocation, and the Golan Heights – Israel surely can’t believe their luck? – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

The world’s quickly shifting balance of power and the US-Chinese unmistakable fight for dominance is likely to, eventually, force countries like Israel to make a choice, of wholly joining the American or the Chinese sphere of influence. It is all reminiscent of the American-Soviet Cold War, where much of the globe was divided into zones of influence operated by proxy from Washington or Moscow.

Balancing acts in politics only work if all parties are willing to play or, at least, tolerate the game. While this form of politics suited Israel’s interests in the past and was played, quite successfully for years by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s balancing act is, possibly, over.

Between Washington’s precise demands to Israel to keep Beijing at bay, and the latter’s aggressive ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy, Israel is facing a stark choice: remaining loyal to a fading superpower or diving into the uncharted waters of an emerging one.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.