Las Vegas-The immersive installation, created by art collective Meow Wolf, opened in February and features interactive spaces designed by more than 325 artists.
The following written content by Sanna Boman
Omega Mart is not your typical grocery store. Housed inside Area 15, an “immersive entertainment and events complex” in Las Vegas, Nevada, this extraordinary supermarket hides a multi-sensory, multi-level multiverse accessible by various portals throughout the store.
Confused by what any of that means? Let’s back up a bit.
Omega Mart, which launched in February of 2021, is the second permanent installation by art collective Meow Wolf. The first one, House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is centered around a Victorian house. But once you step in and start looking around, you quickly realize that something is off. Open the refrigerator or crawl into the fireplace, and you’ll suddenly find yourself transported to a different dimension.
Omega Mart is based on a similar concept—but it’s also wholly original.
“The House of Eternal Return starts with a house. Here we’re starting with something else you’re very familiar with, a grocery store,” says Drew DiCostanzo, director of sales and marketing at Meow Wolf. “The grocery store is just one of those kinds of everyday places that we all go to. In some ways it’s very familiar, and in some ways it’s very strange when you think about what a grocery store really is.”
The concept seems extra fitting after a year where many of us barely left the house—except to go to the grocery store. But the products at Omega Mart are not typical household items. Cans of “implied chicken soup” are lined up next to “dream of mushroom”; one shelf is stocked with “nut free salted peanuts” (it’s just a box of salt); and according to DiCostanzo, the Plausible Deniability brand of laundry detergent is a big hit in Las Vegas.
“We have over a hundred custom products on our shelves, and they’re all a little different and unusual when you start to explore them,” DiCostanzo says as we stroll up and down the aisles of the store. But the storefront is just the beginning of the Omega Mart adventure, and it barely scratches the surface of what this strange place has to offer. Read more from Roadtrippers.
