This artwork was created by Casado during his fellowship residency at Vermont Studio Center.

Excerpt from essay by Ona Mirkinson:

“Multimedia artist José Carlos Casado’s Aliens with Extraordinary Abilities series positions us within the borders of a deliberately conflicted landscape. Casado presents a world in which digital video and 3D animations merge in a series that explores the discomfort of ones own nature; a world that is infatuated with the duality of disaffection; a world that challenges notions of assumed reality. Casado’s title, which most certainly refers to laws regarding non-immigrant Visas for non-citizens seeking work in their desired fields within the United States, guides these negations and prepares us for an experience of reimagining an existence beyond some privileged realm of any given.  Casado’s vision operates within a set of prearranged rules, but they are in opposition to a previously agreed upon reality. An elephant could belong in front of a river in one of Casado’s frames, but—having been re-imagined by Casado’s particular sensibilities, having been slowed and relegated to repetitive languid movements— it undoubtedly doesn’t belong. We cannot help but surmise this as representative of Casado’s own conflicted tensions: between an assumptive certainty and personal truth, between an advantaged notion of belonging and a reality of alienation.”