Waiting for the bus in New York City will never be what it used to be. The new normal that has been talked about so much has meant when we board public transportation, we do so not only masked, but also with a certain amount of fear. 

To embellish our days a little and remind us that New York continues to be the creative city par excellence, "Art on the Grid" has arrived, an initiative in two parts - the first is already on 100 bus stops in the five boroughs of New York and the second will be unveiled on July 27 - enabling 50 emerging artists to show some of their work created during the pandemic. 

Among them are three young people of Latin origin: María Berro, from Colombia, and Lucía Hierro and Firelei Báez, from the Dominican Republic. 

Báez, who moved to the United States with her family when she was very young, used the public space to emphasize the Black women who disappeared in the country. 

She told CNN about it:

"The figure in the play is a girl as I imagined one of the many women who have been attacked in the United States. There's a crisis of about 70,000 missing Black women in the U.S. right now, and it's not in the news," she said.

In addition to emphasizing, the artist wanted to pay tribute to these anonymous women, as well as to others who are recognized, and who with their work opened the way for African-American women, especially in science fiction as a terrain to address other possible and also hopeful futures. 

"What I am looking for is a prayer of love for them where I tell them that we love them, that we miss them and that this is a space for them to rest and feel surrounded by love. In her hands, the girl holds a book by Octavia Butler, a black visionary author," she concluded.

In fact, the title of her work, "On rest and resistance. Because we love you -to all those stolen from among us-" is directly inspired by Butler, who with novels like Kindred has made generations of young people and adults reflect on the weight of roots and our need to empower ourselves with one eye on the future and the other on the past. 

The list of the 50 artists who are part of "Art on the Grid" includes Firelei Baez, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., Rafael Domenech, Chase Hall, Doron Langberg, Sharon Madanes, Emily Mae Smith, Cynthia Talmadge and Andre D. Wagner, among others.