Adrian Pijoan explores Bigfoot, UFOs, and paranormal belief, framing the supernatural as a social practice.
Albuquerque, New Mexico | adrianpijoan.net | @adrian_pijoan
Is the pursuit of Bigfoot a search for an elusive creature, or for companionship? Do UFO conventions exist to prove the existence of extraterrestrials, or to bring believers together? For Albuquerque-based artist Adrian Pijoan, the answer is ambiguous, just the way he likes it.
Across films, performances, and interactive installations, Pijoan treats paranormal belief as a social practice. “I’m much more interested in the human element and the storytelling side of the paranormal than in whether or not any of it is true,” he explains. “Working with these subjects for so long has helped me learn to live in an interstitial space between truth and fiction.”
To inform his work, Pijoan conducts what he describes as primary source research, like attending alien abductee meetups and Bigfoot and UFO research conferences. The surprising romantic undercurrents he observed at some of these gatherings inspired the short film Slow Dance (2022), in which Pijoan’s recurring performance persona Dr. Howard has a blushingly close encounter with Bigfoot.
Pijoan’s practice builds on the proposition that belief is less about proof and more about relation. He’s given many live performances as Dr. Howard, including at Espacio Escultórico UNAM in Mexico City, where he guided participants in attempts to contact extraterrestrials. In Bogotá, Colombia, he collaborated with alien-costumed street performers Clan Depredador to film 1000 beetles a fern a crow (2025). For The moon is full and so are all our inboxes (2024), Pijoan transformed Art Vault in Albuquerque’s City Hall into a fictional Department of Unexplained Phenomena, complete with a phone line for sharing paranormal encounters.
The installation has closed, but the line is still open. Dial 505-768-4747, press 5 (whatever you do, do NOT press 6), and add your own voice to Pijoan’s archive of those looking for the truth and finding each other on the way.
