museum visit!!

Last weekend I went to MOLA museum in long beach. What I caught my attention was the kind of work in the museum, it was divided into 2 sections a gallery with latin American abstract art from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros collecion; and another with projections, photographs and drawings all with a political concept. The abstract work didn't really exited me, it consisted of geometric abstraction. One of the pieces that I found to be the most interesting was a installation by Javier Tellez "la ultima cena" the last supper. Tellez compares institutions to exhibition spaces such as zoo, circus, or museums. The video begins with a wide shot of men eating in a horizontal long table just as the very known epic scene of Jesus and the 12 disciples. A woman singing in the background. The video was done in a mental hospital in Venezuela. It was so moving to me. The woman sings in tongues and spanish she says: "I would sing this song to my mother, in this turbulent reality that I don't know if is real or not, but even if I die to my mother I will sing." It made me think of the sanity of the world, I wished this world was one big mental institution. Is our reality "real"??? is disturbing to think that my reality is molded or altered by who controls me. Who controls me?? I think I do, but I don't think I'm right.. perhaps my family, my friends, my country, my husband, my children??.... so I felt sorry for myself, I was watching a video of a patient in a mental institution that was singing to her mother and what controlled her was her brain nothing else, she was free, thats what I felt from the video, carefree individuals that knew were being film but not really knowing what's going on. I don't often feel like that, I don't feel free in this free country... I envy the reality of the insane.