Inspired by her quirky family and the ’80s UFO craze, Jo Cunningham’s Freak Family Roadshow is a traveling art installation evoking alienation and wonder.
“Aliens were always around,” recalls Jo Cunningham of her offbeat childhood in the 2000s.
She has fond memories of eating pasta or pierogis at the kitchen table with her parents, where they’d talk about aliens in “abstract and symbolic ways” beneath a vintage freak show–style family portrait that her father painted. The characters came from a black-and-white comic, Alien Metaphor, that he’d drawn and published during the UFO craze of the ’80s, before she was born. Her dad constantly read books about alien abductions. Her stuffed animals took mythic alien-inspired adventures. Watching The X-Files was a beloved father-daughter pastime.
“We were a pretty quirky family,” she says.
Today, the self-taught artist is traveling the country. But she still sees her dad’s artwork every day, because he painted the vibrant banner that draws people to her Freak Family Roadshow. It’s a mobile art installation cooked up from their family’s insatiable appetite for aliens—and some of their own quirky qualities.
Cunningham launched The Freak Family Roadshow in 2025 after moving from New York to Arizona in 2020, where she eventually settled in Bisbee, a small city near the U.S.-Mexico border that’s known for its bohemian arts scene.
I love surprising people on the street, taking them out of their world and plopping them into mine.
Inside a small “canned ham” trailer, she’s created a quaint home for three fictional characters based in part on her own nuclear family—including her mom, who was a primatologist.
The mother, a gorilla sporting pink hair curlers, sits in the kitchen perpetually making a banana cream pie. The father, an alien, sits in bed as he daydreams by the window. The child, a hybrid of the two, is perched atop a toilet, staring into the bathroom mirror.
“None of the characters are looking at each other, as if they’re in an Edward Hopper painting,” Cunningham says. “There’s a sadness in the trailer—a sense of collective isolation.”
But there’s also a sense of wonder.
“I hope this encourages people to be more curious and open to things they might not understand,” she says.
Cunningham used papier-mâché and assorted objects, including wool sourced from an alpaca farm in New Mexico, to make her trio of sculptures. For the alien’s skin, she used encaustic wax.
Recently, she added an animatronic carnival barker figure, a human character named Cecil who sits near the trailer door. “I wanted the outside to look more exploitative and creepy, connecting to the history of amusement parks back in the day.”
Inside, she has layered meticulous details. An old glamour shot of the mom. A wedding cake topper. Children’s art. Vintage labels on food cans. “I’m suggesting that these are sentient beings and showing that they have lives beyond what people can see.”
Early on, Cunningham toured The Freak Family Roadshow in California and the Southwest. More recently, she’s hit the Midwest and East Coast. “I’d like to reach as many people across the country as possible,” she says.
Sometimes she calls ahead and pops up at a local creative space. More often, she parks in a random spot. “I love surprising people on the street, taking them out of their world and plopping them into mine.”
Ultimately, it’s all about connection.
“People can feel really alone and alienated in what makes them different,” reflects Cunningham. “I can relate to that feeling of being odd or weird or othered. This is a space where people can be together in their differentness.”
