Altar del Día de los Muertos 2021
It’s been harder than usual to write about my Day of the Dead altar. There are many reasons why this altar is important to me and there are so many metaphors to be found in it, but I only want to write about the ones that truly resonate with me. Ever since I moved to Brooklyn 7 years ago, I’ve been making altars. It has been a way to reconnect with my Mexican culture, and most importantly, give thanks to my grandparents.
The same reasons are still alive today but in a different way. I don’t feel so much of an urge to connect with my Mexican culture because I am more confident now in my connection to it. My grandparents and ancestors will always be the main reason for my altars.
I started mixing other concepts into my altars once I made one for El Museo del Barrio in 2017, Sueños Vivos. At the time my artwork was centered on the US-MX border, and it was important to dedicate the altar to all the immigrants that had lost their lives in the journey. Today, I am keeping some elements from a traditional altar, but including many elements and ideas that are currently part of my art-making.
This altar is as much for my ancestors as it is for myself and what I carry within me. I don’t have a clear definition for what it is that I carry inside and I don’t think it is meant to be understood logically. For me, it is the pain, passion, sadness, pleasure, anger, and fear that I carry and feel in my lower abdomen. I think some of these emotions come from my head and experiences. I’ve even had healers tell me that what I feel is some sort of cellular memory from my ancestors. To be honest, there have been few but memorable times where I felt intensely about something, and there was no way I could explain it to myself. So in my head, I made sense of it by thinking that it was coming from my history, my ancestors, and my/their traumas.
So in a sense, if I follow this line of thought, this altar is for the ancestors that I got to meet in person and the ones that I only know through feeling. My current artwork, which includes this altar, is an attempt to gently reflect on uncomfortable feelings and keep moving through them.
Now that I’ve explained the high-level idea behind my altar, I want to write about what is actually there and why.
The shape of the altar, a circle with a line going through the middle, follows the watercolor paintings that I’ve been creating for the past months (I talk more about this shape in one of my past blogs). Once I knew the shape of my altar, I chose the elements. Some traditional elements are the cempazuchitl flowers, candles, and food. The flower for me is beautiful with a strong scent, and on its own it symbolizes the Day of the Dead. The candles are light and warmth, which every spirit needs ;]. The food is survival and love. One of the few things that I remember about my grandparents is when I ate with them. In this altar I have black and brown beans, rice, pieces of tortilla, and breadcrumbs mixed with the dirt. A beautiful accident was realizing that I was mixing the seed of the bean with the dirt, which for me signifies life, malleability, and feeling grounded (later on I’ll write a post just about the dirt in my art-making). The newest element in this altar is the water combined with the red ink, which is menstrual blood. This is coming from my current art explorations and conceptually is tied to what I mentioned before about my lower abdomen and some physical pain I feel there every once in a while.
One of the best outcomes about creating this altar was realizing that I can consider every art creation as a piece of an altar or something sacred. By viewing it this way, it is easier for me to be open to it, accept it, and respect it.
My last note has to be about my grandparents. Even though I didn’t spend much time with them, they gave me so much love that I still carry with me. I am forever grateful for all the sacrifices they went through and I know that they inform who I am every single day. Gracias.
