What happens to those lost-but-never-found items we all lose during our travels? A favorite baseball cap left in the closet? Fluffy socks left tucked into the sheets? A cosmetic mirror left on the bedside table?

Frequent travelers who leave behind items of value usually call to trace, and find, their lost possessions. Other, less valuable items, remain unclaimed and become the property of the hotel — and perhaps art from everyday life.

“Mythologies: Artifacts From Lost & Found” is an original art installation by New York-based artist Zach Hyman. Inspired by the thousands of items that end up in the lost-and-found department at YOTEL New York, the exhibit features items collected over a span of six months.

The art installation showcases a series of 18 items that have been lost or left behind by their original owners. Adding intrigue to each object’s history, Hyman imagined a story about its history, communicated through a handwritten note alongside each item.

“The connection between the viewer and the original owner is the space in which these specific mythologies exist,” said Hyman. “To be obliged to look at each item without attributing a story to it, or endowing it with some special meaning, would be a denial of creativity and imagination; something we so often do as we become accustomed to the things that exist all around us.”

The creative exhibit aims to bestow a magical and fantastical element to the familiar objects that permeate everyone’s lives. Dream on!