Mexican, Latino, and Chicano Cultures Gather at MNA
The Museum of Northern Arizona comes to life by celebrating the dead during Celebraciónes de la Gente, a Mexican-Latino-Chicano arts marketplace Saturday and Sunday, October 30 and 31.
Luminarios will illuminate the Museum’s historic courtyard filled with a Day of the Dead or Dia de los Muertos decorated gravesite and altars provided by Nuestras Raices, a local group dedicated to locally promoting Mexican/Mexican American/Hispanic culture. The group is also providing a public altar where people who have lost loved ones can join in the celebration by placing a special memento for them on it.
Dia de los Muertos is a holiday held throughout Mexico, Latin America, and the Southwest to celebrate the transformation to afterlife and pay homage to the dead with prayers, celebrations, and altars. Preparing an altar by placing photographs, flowers, candles, favorite foods, and drinks of loved ones provides a special time to remember and to transform grief into acceptance. An important aspect of the holiday is the closure it provides for families who have lost loved ones.
Celebraciónes de la Gente doesn’t stop there—arts, crafts, music, food, strolling mariachis, traditional storytelling, puppet shows, free dance lessons, graffiti art, and a myriad of masks make this unique event both educational and entertaining.
Marvel at music, masks, mosaics and more
Caras y Mascaras: Faces and Masks, a special exhibit by master mask maker and featured artist Zarco Guerrero, delights and educates visitors in a gallery brimming with more than 200 masks and skeletal art (see Zarco sidebar).
The elegant traditions of Hispanic tin working are demonstrated by Fred Lopez, a master tin worker from Santa Fe, while Vincent Ortega from Taos creates mosaic crosses on wood incorporating gold, silver, pewter, and brass, with the traditions he learned from his grandparents. Ortega says his crosses “recreate historic images from throughout the centuries as well as interpretations of modern religious artifacts.”
Diane Moya Lujan’s religious childhood is brought to life in her appliqué work featuring straw mosaics of the lives of saints. Beatrice Maestas Sandoval weaves embroidery into the event. Sandoval uses the Spanish technique of spinning, weaving, and covering fabric called colcha in her art. Sandoval says she works to educate young people on the ancient embroidery craft. “These ways of making life beautiful are endangered—we have a responsibility to keep them alive,” she explains.
Graffiti artists snap nozzles on their spray cans to bring the modern Hispanic world to Celebraciónes de la Gente. Grafitti artists demonstrate their emerging craft on large sheets of wood positioned near the Museum’s outside dance floor. “Graffiti is an art form that is finally being taken seriously,” says Anthony Esparza. “We want our work to be seen, and the Museum is a great place to share what we are creating.”
Music abounds at Celebraciónes de la Gente. From mariachis to the rhythmic ranges of Nosotros, a Latin-American folk music group using instruments made from deer hoofs and flutes, to the ancient percussion-filled sounds and movement of Matachinas, MNA will be a tough place not to tap your feet.
Also performing is violin virtuoso Quetzal Guerrero, son of mask maker Zarco Guerrero. Quetzal Guerrero blends classic Latin jazz and Flamenco music into a dramatic violin performance each day. Entertaining since he was 10-years-old, Quetzal has played his music with Tito Puente, performs throughout the United States, and is about to release his fourth CD.
Music is made visual with dancing by the local Ballet Folklorico Mexico Lindo, which transforms the spirit and culture of Mexico into bright costumes swirling through the air. The beauty and splendor continues with Flor de Mexico Ballet Folklorico from California. Dancers range from four-years-old to adults in both groups. On-site salsa, meringue, and cumbia dance lessons are also available to get you moving to a Latin beat.
Discussions and storytelling help bring the varied Hispanic traditions to life. Each day El Salvadoran storyteller Amanda Blanco shares the folksy stories she learned as a child and Zarco and Carmen Guerrero use visuals and acting to help explain the numerous influences of Dia de los Muertostraditions.
Kid Stuff
Children will not only enjoy the smiling skeletons at Celebraciónes de la Gente, Mexican traditions are easy to understand during puppet shows by Shadow Play, featuring three Mexican folk tales. Children also can make a take-home craft in a Creative Corner.
Zarco Unmasked
Don’t be surprised when you look at Zarco Guerrero’s art installation at the Museum of Northern Arizona and it looks back.
Guerrero’s devilish friends, smiling skulls, portraits, and freaky faces welcome visitors to Caras y Mascaras: Faces and Masks, an exhibit featuring almost 200 masks, multimedia altar installations, murals, puppets, and boulder-like Olmec heads.
Guerrero has traveled worldwide to incorporate cultures from around the world into his pieces. “I am inspired by the beauty and humor of all cultures,” Guerrero says. “Human emotions are our common denominator and mask makers around the world have been recognizing that for centuries.”
Guerrero’s art installation includes “Katrina Copping a Tan”—a beer swilling, cigarette puffing, pink bikini-clad skeleton—part of Guerrero’s tribute to Dia de los Muertos. “Katrina expresses that life is a dance with death and how we play with death with our bad habits,” explains Guerrero.
Altar Nativa, a multimedia altar at the center of the exhibit gallery, uses eggshells, seashells, and ceramic skull masks to honor ancient Indian burial sites. “Traditionally, the smiling skull is a symbol of rebirth,” Guerrero explains. “We decorate the dead, that’s what we do, because one day, we’ll be dead, too.”
The exhibit also includes a large Mother and Child fiberglass sculpture, an area of skeletal figures and giant puppets used in Dia de los Muertos celebrations.
“The puppets create a spectacle because of their size and allow us to marvel at the power of death and its omnipresence,” Guerrero says. “When wearing a mask or working a puppet, there is a mystical quality and they virtually take over. I witnessed this first in Mexico, where I went to study sculpture as a young man.”
Masks that unveil death
Guerrero says he has made thousands of masks, “Sculpture, painting, music, theater, and dance individually were not enough to keep my interest. The masks became a way to bring it all together. It was not my interest to resurrect a dying art, but to invent a vehicle to represent humanity and address social and cultural issues.”
For almost 30 years, Guerrero has traveled worldwide studying mask making techniques and traditions while gathering materials such as wood from Bali and Japan. Inspired by the beauty and humor of world cultures, he says, “People are not so different. Human emotions are our common denominator and mask makers around the world have been recognizing that for centuries.”
An Ode to the Olmec
Guerrero says the four-foot Olmec heads in the gallery represent Mexican life as early as 600 BC. “The facial features are multi-racial—suggesting a blending of races is inevitable,” he explains. “My mandate as an artist is to express humanity.”
Other Mexican inspired artwork in the exhibit includes Calaca masks, the smiling masks of Mexican art used to honor ancestors. These masks serve to identify ourselves with nature and earth’s creatures. “They’re mirrors of us rooted in a common past and destined to share a common future,” says Guerrero.
Guerrero’s Nagual masks blend figurative realism with natural elements such as feathers, furs, horns, and other items he finds during travels or when perusing local thrift shops near his Mesa, Arizona home. Nagual is an Aztec term describing the guardian spirit of man. The masks are first modeled in clay, then cast into durable light weight fiberglass and adorned with bull, goat horns, or deer antlers. The fur is usually fox or sheep wool, recycled from used fur coats. He says his contemporary masks are an expression of “indigenous iconography assimilated and applied to the modern urban arena.”
Masks in the Noh
Japanese Noh theatrical masks also make it into this eclectic show. Putting on a Noh mask means a willingness both to reveal and to conceal. Guerrero says, “The Noh mask is considered to be the most sophisticated masks in the world and the most difficult to carve. Created for Japanese theater, the masks are carved according to strict religious doctrine. Japanese masks are super charged with emotion. They are held sacred.”
The Noh mask was developed during the late 14th century when Noh dramaturgy, one of Japan’s oldest performance arts was born.
“When I went to study in Japan, I was already profoundly influenced by the art of Mexico and I saw that the Japanese masks looked as if they were carved in the same tradition. I wanted to be a part of Noh art right away,” declares Guerrero.
Masks are also clustered in groups such as Carnaval, Frogs, Devils, Freaky Faces, Frida Kahlo inspired masks, Musical, and Healing masks. Most of them have been used in performances throughout the country, as well as in performances by Guerrero.
A force in the Arizona art scene since the early 1970s, Guerrero has participated in the Artist in Education program of the Arizona Arts Commission and has conducted national and international workshops focusing on Dia los de Muertos. He is the founder of Xicanindio Artes, Inc. a nonprofit organization dedicated to better understanding of Latino and Native American Arts.
“I was born and raised in Mesa, Arizona,” he muses. “My family is third generation American. I began to rediscover my roots during the height of the Chicano art movement in San Francisco, Sacramento, and later in Phoenix. My art helps me acknowledge my own ancestors. I am of Mexican descent and from the Juaneno Tribe of Mission Indians in California.”
Guerrero’s Caras y Mascaras: Faces and Masks remains on display through April 25, 2005.