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 16^th 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.