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There’s nothing quite like the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).
El Día is a time when families build living-room altars and decorate family members’ graves as a sign of love and respect. Beginning every November 1 and continuing through the following day, it’s a celebration rooted in ancient Aztec culture that marks a mystical connection between life and death. In more traditional, rural Mexico, graveyard vigils last past midnight, when spirits are asked to commune with the living over sumptuous feasts composed of the favorite foods of the dearly departed. On November 2, there’s usually a special family supper that features pan de muerto (bread of the dead). Friends and family members give one another gifts of sugar skeletons or other items with a death motif, and the gift is more prized if the skull or skeleton is embossed with the recipient’s name.
Although it coincides with the Christian holiday of All Hallows’ Eve, it’s not Halloween.
“We Anglos tend to see death as scary and creepy,” says Crystal O’Brien, director of the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council. “Some of my friends hear about Day of the Dead, and they think it’s something bad, something horrible, so I have to explain that it’s really a celebration of life.”
CHAC is one of a handful of Denver galleries that preserve and promote el Día while conveying it to a broader audience. In the process, the celebration has become a kind of cultural touchstone and link to Mexican heritage in which the artistic creations — especially the altars — become as important as the mysticism. And with the art on display, it’s easy for everyone to see, experience and learn what the celebration is about.
This year, CHAC’s celebration will take a political turn. Along with an open exhibition of works by gallery members throughout the weekend, CHAC will join NEWSED and other community groups for a procession along Santa Fe Drive in memory of the hundreds of Mexicans who die each year trying to cross into the United States illegally. The walk begins at 3 p.m. Saturday at 1029 South Santa Fe Drive.
Others will participate in more low-key observances. At Pirate art co-op, where edgy, hybrid and often irreverent altars and related works will be featured, the Day of the Dead has become a neighborhood tradition over the past 21 years. An Aztec-dance performance on Friday night will be followed by a candlelit, six-block procession to Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. A party back at the gallery, featuring candy-filled piñatas, caps the night.
Chicano artist and event organizer Bob Luna says the procession, led by folks in ghoulish costumes, is a way to “pay tribute, pay respects. We want to let the spirits live” while also “pushing the envelope” by approaching the subject with humor and a cross-cultural influence. And since Day of the Dead traditions vary from region to region and town to town in Mexico, Luna says that having a blend of the old and the new is appropriate for tying the tradition to current popular culture.
Another way to do that is by following the path of Denver artist Jerry Vigil, who has assembled a range of work by Denver school kids for an installation viewable from 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday, November 2, at the new PlatteForum gallery at the base of the Millennium Bridge. Vigil says the Day of the Dead represents an opportunity to remind everyone, Chicano and otherwise, of a culture with unique and beautiful folk art, one that “thumbs its nose at death” rather than running away from it. Mexicans “weave death into life rather than pushing it out to the end of life,” Luna explains, adding that his students definitely grasped that concept: “Some of the work is really pretty powerful.”
