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Mercedes Castro Corbat

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Seeing is believing

When was the last time you got lost? This is what one of my students asked me.

Hmm, I don't remember well, but I do remember the last time I decided not to take the familiar path, altering the recent routine that had been created along with the lunch break during the days spent at the MAD (Museum of Art and Design of New York).

I took the staircase instead of the elevator to go down the 8 floors and at one point, the steps began to be tinted with a colored, magical light. A few steps down, I learned that the light source came from a large stained glass window, the work of Judith Schaechter, Seeing is Believing, installed in the museum's window. Getting lost has bad press, and yet, when we do it we are in a state of alert, of attention regarding the space that surrounds us. In some cultures, initiation rites are based on being lost, for example, in a forest, relying on oneself to survive. If someone is not lost, they do not move on to adulthood.

And this year I had to return to the museum, and I returned with these pieces, paying a humble tribute to that possibility of “getting lost” by changing routines to surprise ourselves in other spaces, to alter the dominant, dominated relationship that we have with our context, to celebrate being alert, awake, attentive.