This exhibition questions assumptions about the relationship of language and visual art. It explores in depth what happens when artists indulge that "fundamental impulse... to breach the supposed boundaries" between the verbal and the visual. Organized by the University Art Gallery at New Mexico State University at Las Cruces from their permanent collection, UNMUTE asks: how do we achieve a transcendent aesthetic experience in a lightning-fast, disposable age, when information is consumed at a rate of a thousand clicks per day? The prints, photographs, artist’s books, and mixed media works in this exhibition deny an instant read; we skim at the risk of missing much. The fifty-two artists included here have turned up the volume, so to speak, adding linguistic signs to the “mute” images they create. UNMUTE provides evidence that the mingling of verbal and visual sign systems is as cogent as ever.

The exhibition includes 38 framed works and 14 artists' books by artists including Sue Coe & Holly Metz, Ruth Laxson, Shiro Ikegawa, Joni Maabe, George Rickey, Terry Allen, William Wiley, Larry Rivers, Carrie Mae Weems, Jaune Quick to See Smith, Enrique Chagoya & Albert Rios, Sol LeWitt, Liliana Porter, and many others. The exhibition premiered at NMSU in August 2010 and is now available for circulation.