Mexic-Arte Museum Creates A Shared Space To Remember Lost Loved Ones This Día De Los Muertos
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In the rear exhibition of the Mexic-Arte Museum, around 100 picture frames line three walls. They are filled with photos of everyday people – fathers, sisters, daughters, uncles – who have died, and each of them is accompanied by a note written by a loved one. We miss you. Always in our hearts. Some frames are decorated with brightly colored flowers, crosses, and popular sports team logos. Others are easy.
In a lower row, a blue hand-painted frame holds a photo of a smiling couple. Below the picture there is a sentence painted in lower case: “Juntos para siempre”. Together forever. The note next to it explains that the couple died in January, “within 25 minutes and just a month before their 40th wedding anniversary.”
“You died of COVID,” it says there.
Since it opened in the 1980s, the Mexic-Arte Museum in downtown Austin has hosted a Día de los Muertos exhibition every year, celebrating the Mexican holiday when people remember their deceased family members. This year, the museum has asked the public to get involved by submitting photos and memories of loved ones they wish to honor.
Michael Minasi / KUT
Photos of the deceased adorn a wall of the Mexic-Arte Museum for the exhibition Día de los Muertos.
Death has been a particularly important part of daily life for the past year and a half between the COVID-19 pandemic and storms like the winter frost in February and the Gulf Coast floods. With this in mind, the museum wanted to create a common space in which people can come together and remember, says the museum’s director, Sylvia Orozco.
“We are all very close to death now. It’s like we’re among us, ”she said. “And that’s why I think that it helps to share a room with other people, to bring a community together, to just be around with other people to share the same experiences.”
The Nuestra Comunidad / Our Community – Memory and Remembrance exhibition opened on Friday and runs until November 22nd. (Visitors must wear masks.)
San Jose Cemetery
In addition to the celebration of the Día de los Muertos, the exhibition also includes an installation that pays tribute to those buried in the San José Cemetery, a historic Mexican and Mexican-American cemetery in the East Austin neighborhood of Montopolis.
A wall of black and white photos reveals the most notable features of the cemetery – a shabby metal arch marked “San José Cementerio,” a huge oak tree that stands in the center of the property, and the many tombstones, each 2.5 acres big are unique.
Michael Minasi / KUT
Black and white photos of the San José cemetery line one wall of the exhibition.
The photo series was compiled by (Re) claiming Memories, a research group from UT Austin that seeks to restore and preserve missing stories in color communities. After finding little-documented history about the cemetery and its sister site, San José II in Del Valle, the group began researching and documenting the history of the cemeteries last year. San José was built around 1919 and is considered unclaimed, which means that no one is officially responsible for its upkeep.
Diana Hernandez, the group’s lead researcher, said the cemetery may look shabby and ignored to outsiders, but it is not.
“While it looks like a neglected room to many, it isn’t,” she said. “It is taken care of. The community took care of it. “
Many of the founding members of the Montopolis community are buried in San José, as are people of various faiths and indigenous groups. Marika Alvarado’s grandparents and four other family members are buried in San José.
“When we were there, they didn’t have paved roads, we were kids, but everyone came together and told stories from the directions they came from,” said Alvarado, a Lipan Mescalero Apache who grew up in Montopolis. “And that was the nice thing about this quarter and this community for me.”
The black-and-white photographs in the installation include a portrait of their grandparents, as well as photographs of the tombstones of their family members and the plants that surround the graves – something Alvarado knows a lot about. A direct descendant of generations of medicine women, she teaches traditional indigenous medicine that uses plants for healing.
Michael Minasi / KUT
Black and white photos show the headstones and some of the people buried in the San José Cemetery in Montopolis.
Although many people are unaware of this, she says that many of the plants around the cemetery, such as cedar trees and white mulberries, were purposely planted by indigenous peoples and have a specific meaning.
“A lot of the plants are put in the room because a person who was a traditional healer died,” she said. “And so [that’s a] Reminder of the work done. “
Alvarado will give a lecture on plants and their meaning in the museum in November (date still open). She is accompanied by Margaret Gallagher, a PhD student in landscape architecture and a member of (Re) claiming Memories, who took the photos of the cemetery for the exhibition. Gallagher said she hopes the project will give people a better understanding of the cemetery and its importance, which she believes is especially important as the Montopolis community continues to be affected by gentrification and development.
“The underlying idea was really, how can we make this information more accessible to people, and how can we help foster connections to space that people might not otherwise have had?” She said.
Traditions across Mexico
In addition to commemorating the relatives of Austin residents, the Mexic-Arte Museum also has an exhibit showing how the people of Mexico celebrate the Day of the Dead.
Michael Minasi / KUT
An ofrenda created by Maria Eugenia Flores contains marigolds, fruits, candles, water, salt and papel picado.
At the front of the museum, a large ofrenda, or altar, greets the guests. It is typical of the style of the Mexican state of Michoacán, decorated with marigolds, fruit bowls, candles and Papel Picado, tissue paper with elaborate cutouts. During the Día de los Muertos, which is typically celebrated on November 1st and 2nd, families welcome back the souls of lost loved ones. They place offerings on graves or altars – flowers, candles, and the deceased’s favorite foods and drinks.
“In other cultures, sometimes when someone dies they are buried and somehow forgotten,” said Orozco. “But in the Día de los Muertos you are back with your family every year.”
On the walls around the altar there are more than 100 photographs by photographer Mary J. Andrade, who have documented for decades how people in different parts of Mexico honor the dead. The photographs show vigils in cemeteries in Michoacán, ritual dances in Puebla and graves decorated with marigold wreaths and large candles in San Luis Potosí.
“People can see [the photographs] and notice the differences that emerge from each area, ”said Orozco.
The holidays, she said, are about being with the family.
“It’s a family tradition so that you can remember your family members,” she said. “And the closeness that you experience in life is experienced all over again on these days.”
Do you have a tip? Send an email to Marisa Charpentier at mcharpentier@kut.org. Follow her on Twitter @marisacharp.
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