Miguel Novelo: INFRAMUNDO

Miguel Novelo: INFRAMUNDO

In his first institutional solo exhibition, Miguel Novelo presents an interdisciplinary project that brings together Indigenous knowledge systems, ecological grief, and technological innovation. In INFRAMUNDO, visitors move through immersive, responsive environments where perception, inherited ways of knowing, and emerging technologies converge. Virtual spaces become interactive with motion, sound and presence, inviting reflection on how humans, machines, and the living world exist as inseparable parts of the same systems.

Born in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, Novelo draws on a landscape shaped by cenotes—natural sinkholes formed by the Chicxulub meteorite impact, presumably responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs, and regarded as sacred portals to the Maya underworld. By situating his work in this geologically and culturally layered terrain, he connects memory, ancestral knowledge, and deep planetary time.

The exhibition is an invitation to the underworld, the INFRAMUNDO, where bodies are left behind and the human becomes geological. Contrary to the Anthropocene’s narrative of humans as a geological force, the exhibition invites the viewer to look inward—and become a rock. Guided by Maya cosmology and the avatars of the bat, jaguar, snake, dog, and crocodile, we enter a space for serious play and connection with the other. Immersive and generative installations invite us to defy fear of the dark and unknown, to embrace uncertainty. Augmented reality installations, machine learning apparatus, and rock sculptures invite us to create rituals, reconsider the inanimate as living, reflect on death, renewal, and coexistence with non-human intelligence.

Through these responsive environments, INFRAMUNDO attunes visitors to intertwined cycles of life, death, and matter, offering a space to encounter worlds beyond human time and perception (and possibly beyond human patience).

Credits and Collaborators
The exhibition is curated by Zoë Latzer, Curator and Director of Public Programs, with exhibition design and built by Sam Marks, Facilities and Operations Manager, and Paul Gallo. With thanks to ICA Staff, James Leventhal, Makeda Barr-Brown, Liliana Aspromonte, Jose Perla, Ruby Medina, Kirk Walukiewicz, and Sue Hunter. Collaborators include FMT Estudio (Zaida Briceño and Orlando Franco); actors and performers Josué Maychi, Anna Díaz, Joselyn Amaya, Nicté del Carmen, Mariana Mendoza, Andrea Buenfil, Jairo Mukul, Jason Ramno, Maricarmen Sordo, and Pata de Perro Films. Some materials sourced at the Recology San Francisco Artist in Residence Program. With thanks to Deborah Munk, Catherine McMahon, and Karina Hammoud. Design by Arina Pozdnyak. 

Support
Major support for INFRAMUNDO is provided by Lead Exhibition Funders John Green and Martin Fox, along with support from the Mercy and Roger Smullen Fund and the Ronald Whittier Family Foundation. Additional support for ICA programs and exhibitions comes from the City of San José’s Office of Cultural Affairs, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, Applied Materials, the Lipman Family Foundation, Yvonne and Mike Nevens, and SVCreates. With direct artist support from San José State University, Department of Art & Art History, James E. Olson Art and Design Endowment Fund and Stanford University, Art and Art Practice Department.   

About Miguel Novelo
Miguel Novelo is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher whose work utilizes algorithmic cinema, game engine environments, and human computer interaction design. His research-based practice investigates non-human perspectives and speculative world-building, creating systems where audiences engage with geological change, animal cognition, and the liminal spaces between landscape and data. 

He received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2018 and an MFA from Stanford University in 2022. His work has been presented at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, the Recology AIR Program, and international film festivals. Novelo teaches at Stanford University and in the CADRE program at San José State University. At Stanford University, he is a full-time Lecturer in Experimental Media Arts within the Department of Art & Art History and a Symbolic Systems program affiliate; he also serves as a Lecturer at SJSU’s CADRE Laboratory for New Media.