José Maldonado’s exhibition cast itself as a “version” of the famous play by Calderón de la Barca, El Gran Teatro del Mundo (The great world theater, ca. 1640) which inspired both Walter Benjamin and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Like Jorge Luis Borges’ Pierre Menard, Maldonado copied the manuscript in his own hand and included it as part of the installation.

The rest of the pieces in the show represented the characters. As is well known, they are allegorical characters, ranging from representative figures of the social order—the king, the child, the rich man—to more abstract figures such as discretion