Artist John Jota Leaños’ McMuerto’s project (1998) satirized the encroaching commercialization and cultural mainstreaming of the día de muertos festival in the USA: Inspired by the ancient Aztec’s legendary journey to the happy land of the dead, McTlandTM is a world of exotic fun and surprises. The diligent research of McMuerto’s staff has brought the … Read moreMcMuerto’s
Audio as the Realm of the Dead was a 2007 site-specific memento mori sound art project by Victoria Estok: Created as a gift to those who recognize Roosevelt, NJ as their home, this one day sound installation allowed the dead to be heard again and the listener to enter into a realm of shared memory deep … Read more“Audio as the Realm of the Dead”
New Orleans artist Candy Chang created the first Before I Die wall in 2011, after the death of a close friend. By painting the wall of an abandoned house in her neighborhood with chalkboard paint and repeatedly stenciling the phrase “Before I die I want to”, followed by a blank line, she established a local … Read moreThe “Before I Die” Project
Here’s an excerpt from Stefania Spano’s essay for Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities on the theme of dark humor in memento mori art: Ruysch’s artistry was matched by his commitment to the underlying science and to using the materials of the dead to teach the living. “I do this,” he explained, “to take … Read more“Laughing in the Face of Death: Ruysch, Dark Humor & Subversion of the Memento Mori in Anatomical Art”
Activist Danny Gamboa produced this short, intimate documentary on ghost bikes – junk bicycles painted white and locked to street signs as memorials to riders killed by cars in traffic accidents.
This episode of the Artbound documentary series considers the reinvention of the Day of the Dead festival in the USA, particularly via the work of the Self Help Graphics community art center in East Los Angeles during the early 1970s. For much more on this subject, I strongly recommend Regina M. Marchi’s 2009 book Day … Read moreArtbound: “Día de los Muertos/Day of the Dead”
Here is Allison Elizabeth Solso’s 2015 dissertation on the theme of “vernacular memorials”; the often-temporary shrines constructed by bereaved families and friends at the sites of often-violent deaths. An excerpt: My relationship to these spaces was always confused, even as I did my best to maintain respect and some modicum of decorum. The need to … Read more“Beyond Memento Mori: Understanding American Religions Through Roadside Shrines”
By Tony Wolf During late January of 2020 I returned to snowy Chicago from a three-week long vacation and family reunion in sunny New Zealand. During the trip we’d celebrated my mother’s 80th birthday with a surprise party and also received the devastating news of a death in the American branch of the family. At … Read moreThe Vanitas Shrine: Remembering Death and Seizing the Day
Here is the Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca’s mesmerizing 1933 lecture/essay The Theory and Play of the Duende, as translated by A.S. Kline. Some excerpts: Those dark sounds are the mystery, the roots that cling to the mire that we all know, that we all ignore, but from which comes the very substance … Read more“All that has dark sounds has duende”
By Tony Wolf Several years after staging The New Danse Macabre in Wellington, New Zealand, I had become part of the regular faculty of the Stamping Ground Festival of Dance and the Action Arts in Bellingen, Australia. Stamping Ground was the brainchild of veteran dancer/ choreographer Peter Stock, who wanted to encourage greater participation in … Read moreThe New Danse Macabre at Stamping Ground (2003)