Operating like an encyclopedist of the everyday, Cuevas assembled Dormimundo (Sleepworld) (1998–99, 29:14 mins), nine short films reflecting the rituals of delusion that occupy our time. This is a grand catalog of discomfort she locates in the artifice needed to beautify and thus assuage daily life. Most striking is the episode El Diablo en la Piel (Devil in the Flesh) in which the artist undermines dramatic pathos by plying her eyes with chiles to create a profusion of false tears. In Colchones Individuales (Single Beds) (2002, 18 mins), Cuevas plucks intimate moments from the accelerating continuum of our lives. As if suspended in time, they beckon observation, but reward us with the strange anxieties of a life free from propulsion. Perhaps Cuevas's most chilling work, Cinepolis, la Capital del Cine (2003, 22 mins) forecasts an image-driven invasion of everyday life, picture-perfect and unnoticed. This alien intrusion comes in the form of a fully branded consumerscape that cheerily foists fast foods along with the fantasy. Irreverent and biting, Ximena Cuevas fights back with the only weapons available-images of the enemy, and the enemy's images.