Global Elegies: Art and Ofrendas for the Dead is the title of the 10th annual Días de los Muertos exhibition at the Oakland Musem of California. Sandra and I went to see it today and I can highly recommend it.
This exhibit was a bit different than other Day of the Dead exhibits I’ve seen. The curator, Enrique Chagoya, included some interesting non-Latino works along with some great traditional and non-traditional Latino works. You’ve got your lobster-shaped coffin from Ghana, acrylic crosses embedded with ashes of an artist who died of AIDS, a terrarium (with projected video) containing live ants listening to electronic music and eating alfeñiques/calaveritas (sugar skulls), and a purple papier-mâché skull with a devil on top having several teeth removed by skeletons. How could you not get incredibly excited about an exhibit like this one?
The Oakland Museum store also has some great stuff, especially the items related to this show. We bought a very cool mirror that is surrounded by paintings based on prints by José Guadalupe Posada, my favorite printmaker.