I created a special poster for my solo exhibition Space Invaders at the Roswell Museum, in Roswell, New Mexico. The Roswell Museum has a very unique and very problematic collection housed in their institution. The Aston Collection is a private collection of “Western Artifacts” that is on permanent display. The collection includes, sacred Indigenous garments, tomahawks, and headdresses intermixed with alien artifacts. The famous UFO museum does not have one single alien artifact in their collection, but inside Roswell Museum there is huge glass displace case that features real life alien artifacts. Saddles, steal swords, muskets, U.S. Calvary uniforms and Spanish conquistador armor, are just some of the alien artifacts in this huge collection. In conjunction with the exhibition alien theme, this poster/tour guide was made for audiences to interact with this controversial collection. There is two poster designs. One has the classic arcade font of the Space Invaders video game juxtaposed with the eight-bit covered wagon from the pioneer video game Oregon Trail, that we used to play as a learning tool in elementary school. The other design has a Spanish galleon beaming up and abducting two Indigenous people. On the back of both of these designs is a portion of the Aston collection with specific alien artifacts highlighted and described with a more accurate description vs the text the museum offers. These posters were made by SouthWest Printers, a local print ship that was able to add a black-light ink to give the poster an extra sci-fi look.
