The Detroit Institute of the Arts is hosting its 11th annual installment of Ofrendas: Celebrating el Día de Muertos, which features 13 ofrendas, or offerings, by local artists and community members.
Alicia Diaz, an instructor in the Wayne State Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, said ofrendas originated in Latin America but became a world-wide tradition for people to remember and celebrate the dead.
“Ofrenda is a place not just to grieve,” Diaz said. “It’s about life, it’s about remembrance and it’s about healing… It has evolved to where ofrenda is art, it is politics, it is memory, but it is always community.”
DIA Family Program Coordinator Emily Bowyer said the exhibit is designed to familiarize visitors with ofrendas and the Mexican traditions of Day of The Dead.
“The annual exhibition builds a sense of community as visitors identify with the reasons and ways people honor the deceased while collectively taking part in the act of remembering,” Bowyer said.
The DIA partners with the Mexican Consulate in Detroit, Southwest Detroit Business Association, Mexicantown Inc and a tri-county educator to collectively select a batch of ofrendas to display every year, Ani Garabedian, the DIA’s Manager of Community Engagement Programs, said.
Garabedian said community members are welcome to enter their ofrenda ideas, and the selection committee considers clarity of intent, level of displayed artistry and/or creativity and alignment with the values and characteristics of the Día de Muertos tradition.
Diaz said someone doesn’t have to be of Latinx origin to appreciate ofrendas and the community sentiment they create. In Mesoamerican tradition, life and death were celebrated, not compartmentalized, Diaz said.
“I think there’s something about grieving in community, even with total strangers who don’t share your identity, however you define that,” Diaz said. “But we do share an identity. We’re humans. We share this space. We share this community, and death is universal. Period…ofrendas are for everyone.”
Garabedian said the exhibit has grown since its inception in 2012 and that it has become one of the DIA’s most popular exhibitions, with about 37,000 people viewing last year’s display.
Diaz worked with a group of first year students in WSU’s Summer Enrichment Program and Latinx Medical Student Association to create an ofrenda titled “El Fuego Se Equivoco,“ or “The Fire was Mistaken.”
Diaz said the name is inspired by the burning of Mayan culture by Fanciscan Monks in the Yucatan Peninsula and other instances because they were seen as an “impediment to the conversion of the population to Catholicism” by Spanish colonizers.
“We don’t know how many Mayan codices, cultural artifacts, sacred objects were gathered and burned publicly in a series of bonfires with the justification of the objects being idolatrous and accused of being satanic…. There’s heartbreaking reports of how the Mayan peoples wailed as they watched it literally turn to ash.”
CLLAS’s ofrenda this year is overall dedicated to the silencing of voice and connects to president day censorship issues.
“We brought it forward through incidents in the Americas where creatives, authors, poets, singers, political activists, have often paid very brutal prices for speaking truth to power, including their lives,” Diaz said. “The fires, whether they were literal fires or other forms of violence, that took place did not have the last word and there is a deep legacy of resistance and empowerment through memory, and that has continued through to the 21st century.”
Diaz said ofrendas are important because they unite people.
“Practices like this remind us that there’s more that unites us, not to be cliche, than divides us,” Diaz said. “It’s an opportunity, not only to understand a tradition that dates back millennia… but this is really about (showing) that there are safe spaces where you can do this.”
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The exhibit opened Sept. 23 and will be on display during regular hours at the DIA until Nov. 5. An online version of the exhibit can be accessed here.
Natalie Davies 