CMAC’s
El Dia de los Muertos
Celebrates
Mexican Holiday
By Susie Davidson
CORRESPONDENT
Octavio Paz wrote that, unfazed by
death, the Mexican "chases after it, mocks it, courts it, hugs it, sleeps
with it; it is his favorite plaything and his most lasting love."
On this note, altars and memorials
will fill the lower gallery of the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center this
Saturday. A somber, melancholic scene? No way.
El Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican
Day of the Dead, is a time for recalling one’s departed loved ones, but
also, a call for uplifting music, great food, flowers, tequila, festive
clothing - in short, a party.
CMAC’s 16th annual
fest, to be held Nov. 2 at 8 p.m. this year, will include authentic Mexican
food and crafts for sale, as well as children’s activities. Also on the
bill will be the return of the Mariachis, a locally-based group known as
Mariachi Mex-America.
In Mexico, Nov. 1, All Saints Day,
and Nov. 2, All Souls Day, are universally marked by customs and tradition
which, though variable by region, commonly include colorful decorating, food,
offerings and family reunions at burial plots. Loud fireworks are often a part
of the commemoration ceremonies, as are religious rites. Customarily, the first
day recalls angelitos, deceased infants and children, while the second
tributizes adults. CMAC’s version is a facility-wide event.
“Our annual remembrance
celebration of friends, family, and community members lost,” said CMAC
Executive Director Shelley Neill, “honors and celebrates their lives
through music and dance. Our lower gallery altars continue to provide a quiet
sanctuary for reflection, and a place where you can place flowers, photos,
messages, and other mementos.”
In the upper gallery and theater,
food and crafts for sale will share the stage with children’s
participatory projects. In the lower, remarkable altars run in conjunction with
“Beneath the Sun and Moon: Photographs by Jaye Phillips,” which has
been on exhibit since Oct. 22, and will end after the fest. Phillips’
photographs, taken in the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Michoacan,
Queretaro and the Yucatan, capture festivals, weddings, and contemporary and
ancient iconography. Her technique
involves scanning and printing photographs onto archival papers. “Phillips’ photography was intergral to our
‘el dia’ installation last year, and appears again this
year,” said Neill.
“My photos,” said
Phillips, “include images of the annual Candelaria Festival in February,
a wedding, and one altar. The Day of the Dead is very much a time of making and
renewing altars,” said Phillips.
The Candelaria festival portrayed in
her photos is, she explained, “a pre-Lent passion play and festival,
which portrays both good and evil within allegorical characters, many of whom
are decked out in elaborately carved wooden masks.
Phillips made her first trip to Mexico seven years ago, when asked
to photograph for Andra Fischgrund Stanton’s Zapotec Weavers of Teotitlan
book for the Museum of New Mexico Press. The book chronicles the design and
crafting of Zapotec Indian weavings created in the small village of Teotitlan,
outside of the city of Oaxaca. “Since the weaving project,” she
said, “I have returned to Mexico many times with Deb Colburn, inspired
Mexican traveler and owner of Nomad (1741 Mass. Ave.).” The two have
explored indigenous culture and mythologies in Michoacan, Chiapas, Oaxaca, and
the Yucatan.
“Icons, as well as ceremonies,” said Phillips,
“carry symbolic meanings for Mexican indigenous peoples. Animate and
inanimate, contemporary and pre-Columbian, reverent and irreverent, their icons
are touchstones evoking memory, comfort, inspiration and spiritual
significance.
“What keeps drawing me back to Mexico is a quality so uniquely
Mexican and compelling, a multisensory power that both startles and engages the
senses and sensibilities.”
Tickets are $10, $8 for CMAC
members, students, and seniors. The Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center is
located at 41 Second St, Cambridge, one block from The Cambridgeside Galleria
Mall and accessible by the Green Line Lechmere Station or the 69 MBTA bus. For
more information, call 617-577-1400 or visit www.cmacusa.org.