“Welcome to ‘Mirror.’ ” An attendant in a white mask immediately emerges next to us and asks us to take two bracelets, one for each wrist. “You’re the first visitors, so you have the space to yourselves. Follow the white lights on the floor,” he starts. “They’ll take you around the exhibit. It’s interactive, so the artist encourages you to touch if you’d like. It was designed with the objective that you become the focal point of each section. You are both spectator and subject of the gaze. How you interact with the space is meant to be a mirror to how you interact with the world outside. Do you engage, move within it, shy away from it, observe from the outside, all the above? Will you regret it if you just sit back and do nothing, or are you content to watch? These are questions the artist wishes you to consider. Are you ready to travel through the looking glass?”

Jack’s fingers intertwine in mine, and he bounces on the balls of his toes. “This is beyond cool. I’m so ready.”

Double doors swing open slowly, and we exchange quick glances. Jack’s blue eyes guide us forward, beacons in the dark.

The first room’s perimeter is lined with what looks like one long flower box along three of the four walls, separated into three distinct sections. The first is cascading valleys of thick, clay-like sand illuminated by blue overhead spotlights. There’s a sign that says, Touch Me, and Jack rolls up his sleeves and dives in. The moment his fingers make contact, the sands change color to a deep red, the light rippling out beneath his touch like water. I watch him recoil at first then smile as he gets to work molding a makeshift sandcastle. When he’s done, he steps back, and the light effects color it with various shades of green as if it were topography on a map.

I pull him toward the section of the box filled with aqua-blue slime. I poke at it, and the lights projecting from above make cartoon bubbles.

Jack stops to smell actual rows of flowers in another part of the box, and he gasps. “Chase, holy shit, come here! Start at the beginning, and when the petals change color, sniff. My brain is melting!”

I do as he says, and the first line of flowers, stalks of lavender, smell like, well, lavender, but the second row of pink chrysanthemums give off a burst of cotton candy. As I move to the sunburst-yellow sunflowers, I smell rich, buttery popcorn. White roses smell like piña coladas and sunscreen at the beach. At the end of the row, a series of bouquets with sapphire-blue and bright-orange orchids carry the scent of freshly baked brownies. It’s safe to say we’re both disoriented.

“What do you think the point of that was?” he asks. “Because I’m questioning literally everything ever.”