Travel journal
This travel journal arises from my interest in observing an unknown city, in finding among its components elements that are familiar to me, as well as others that are completely unknown. Such elements make up the city and shape the way it is inhabited; they are milestones etched in my memory that help me relive the journey. I have chosen to write fictional accounts based on a selection of images of the trip that have remained present for me, inspired by the things that caught my attention, things that made me reflect and wonder about how the city of New York is constructed and lived in and that are, to some extent, a map of the experience I shared with thirteen others over fourteen days of travel
The texts are inspired by Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino and are an exercise in imagination, where other cities merge with the elements I found in New York City, which had a strong presence throughout the routes and visits we made. They reflect the journey, but also my thoughts and experiences in relation to this city.

Silvia Elvira Acosta

Mexico City, 1992

She is an artist and architect born in Mexico City. She graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at UNAM (2011–2016) and from the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado “La Esmeralda” (2016–2021). She participated in a student exchange program and completed a residency at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia (2015). She has participated in various seminars on the city, memory, and artistic and architectural production at Campus Expandido (MUAC), the Faculty of Arts and Design at UNAM, Casa Vecina, among others. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Visual Arts specializing in drawing at the Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM), and is also part of the Programa Educativo SOMA (SOMA Study Program). Her work has been included in several group exhibitions in various venues across Mexico City, such as Pulsar el vacío at Eugenia Espacio (2024), Golpe de suerte at Escrituras Experimentales (2024), Lección del día at Salón Silicón (2018), Stopping at Casa Vecina (2017), and Verde Olivo at the Instituto Mexicano de Justicia (2017). Both her artistic production and research have primarily focused on themes such as landscape, spatial and sensory perception, and the dynamics of interaction between subjects and objects within inhabited space. Influenced by her training as an architect, her work is guided by the notions of inhabiting the landscape and configuring territory. She works mainly through drawing, installation, and textile.

Travel journal

Over the course of two weeks, I wandered through New York City with a Super 8 camera and an audio recorder, documenting the diverse flows that compose the city. This project stems from questions about how a city is built through memory, and what is transformed when memory becomes the only way to return to certain places.

I am interested in thinking about memory, both individual and collective, as a force that alters space, reorganizing it over time. The camera does not serve as an impartial witness here; rather, it functions as a filter that reinterprets the surroundings. Silhouettes, shadows, and echoes form an image charged with layers and detours.

This exercise is not about narrating a city, but about traversing it.The piece unfolds as a fragmentary drift, where each map turns into an attempt at reading. New York appears not as a stage, but as an unstable surface made of traces, interruptions and overflows. At the intersection of personal archive and urban territory, memory operates less as a repository than as an active mode of perception.

The use of the Super 8 follows this logic, not for its nostalgic evocation, but for its ability to make the wear of documentation visible. The marks on the celluloid, its flaws and textures, heighten the sense of being in a city in constant transformation, where the visible and the absent blur, and get confused.

This work does not seek to capture the city in a fixed image, but rather to open a reading of its tensions: between what is remembered and what is erased, what resounds and what remains outside the range of hearing. The camera does not capture: it interrupts, diverts, and reframes. What is ultimately proposed here is a way of wandering: a mobile reading of the urban landscape through its remnants.

Mario Alberto Bravo

State of Mexico, 2000

His multidisciplinary artistic practice encompasses writing, sound, and elements of everyday life in Mexico. His work moves through literature, sound art, installation, photography, and 3D animation. He is currently participating in the Programa Educativo SOMA (SOMA Study Program). In 2023, he toured a series of quadraphonic installations across various venues in Colombia, including Parque Explora, Matik Matik, and the Museo de Arte de Pereira. He has collaborated with Kaunas 2022 in Lithuania on the release of the album Matters; with the Palestinian radio station Radio Alhara in the program “A Common Place”; and with the Uganda-based record label Syrphe.

His work has been shown at institutions such as Paris College of Art, the Centro Cultural de España en México, Museo Experimental El Eco, Museo Universitario del Chopo, The Wrong Biennale, and the Kaunas Art Institute, among others. His practice explores the perception of space between the visible and the invisible, investigating how these dimensions shape social dynamics and their relationship with memory.

Travel journal

This tarot deck of the twenty-two arcana (+ two versions of the same song by Miranda!) emerged from the program Viaje como experiencia de aprendizaje (Travel as a Learning Experience, 2025), during which the SOMA 2025 generation traveled to New York City, invited by CIAC.

Just like the twenty-two major arcana, these cards explore the trip through a symbolic narrative. The deck picks up and reinterprets tarot archetypes through experiences, images, and symbols that marked this extraordinary experience. Each card represents an archetypal experience translated into icons, signs, and illustrations, merging the anecdotal with the stereotypical.

The major arcana appear as symbolic representations of key moments from both an inner and outer journey: from the impulsive and wide arrival of The Fool, with its intention like an arrow, to the guiding light of The Star, evoked in a bas-relief inscription at the Noguchi Museum.

Each arcana not only echoes a universal symbol, but also takes on new life through the experiences, sounds, and contrasts shared with those who accompanied me during these two weeks in New York. The game becomes an invitation to remember the city and my time at SOMA, where landscapes, friendships, and gossip become mirrors of the soul.

Thus, the Jungian archetypes —The Wise Old Man, The Shadow, The Mother— intertwine with the major arcana to offer us an emotional and symbolic map of human travel, with New York as its stage and catalyst.

                                                                   El Diablo 

Download pdf with printable deck and instructions  

Antonio Castillo

Santiago de Chile, 1991

Bachelor of Arts from the Universidad Católica de Chile, he has worked as a sculptor and draftsman, in addition to directing the web series Esculturas Domésticas TV. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in Chile, Mexico, Argentina, the United States, and Spain. In 2018, he received the Mori scholarship, which allowed him to undertake a one-year residency at Taller Bloc (Santiago, Chile), as well as the Premio Arte Joven awarded by Santiago’s City Hall, and the Lazo-Cordillera scholarship, enabling him to participate in a residency at Proyecto Urra (Tigre, Argentina). In 2022, together with Sarai León (Sarai & Antonio, 2018–present), he was awarded the regional creation FONDART grant. He is currently enrolled in the Programa Educativo SOMA (SOMA Study Program).

Travel journal 

In this video, recorded in an influencer style, I reflect on the relationship between art and the social categories that define what we consider as good or bad taste, exploring how these perceptions are tied to the dominant culture and power dynamics. My experience in New York led me to realize that the works that I find most exciting and enjoyable, such as those by Renée Green or Lee Bul, use color, texture and saturation to explore cultural themes, identities and social discourses, in contrast to the monochromatic and austere minimalist tendencies prevailing within certain dominant artistic and cultural circuits. I reflect on how maximalism and kitsch, often dismissed as vulgar or distasteful, can serve as modes of resistance and authenticity expressed from the  margins, while categories of taste are charged with symbolic violence. Finally, I recognize myself as an overflowed artist in a world that privileges discretion, minimalism and quiet elegance. I’d rather embrace the excessive, the monstrous and the kitsch as a way of claiming my own vitality and identity.

Samara Colina

Guanajuato, 1992

She is part of the Programa Educativo SOMA (SOMA Study Program, 2023-2025). She holds a Master’s degree in Artistic Production (MaPA Visual) from the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos (2020–2022) and a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from the Universidad de Guanajuato (2013–2018). In 2024, she was awarded the grand prize at the Tijuana Triennial: 2nd International Painting Competition, organized by the Centro Cultural Tijuana (2024). She is a two-time recipient of the Guanajuato Program for the Stimulus of Creation and Artistic Development (PECDA, 2021 and 2023). She received the acquisition prize at the National Young Art Encounter in its 42nd (2022) and 40th (2020) editions, organized by the Instituto Cultural de Aguascalientes and the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura. In 2021, she won third place in the 8th International Visual Arts Biennial for University Students in the “students” category. Her work has been featured in nine solo exhibitions and over thirty group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally.