The Mexican festival of Días de los Muertos honors the enduring connection and communication between the dead and the living. The Oakland Museum of California’s eighth annual Days of the Dead exhibition, Pasajes y Encuentros: Ofrendas for the Days of the Dead, highlights three thematic "passageways" that connect the dead with the living: tradition, humor and spirit. The exhibition, which takes place from Oct. 13 through Nov. 25, 2001, features altars and artworks by Bay Area Chicano and Latino artists, community groups and students. A free Sunday afternoon community celebration on October 21 includes music, ceremonies, craft activities, a mercado and creation of a community altar.

A mural featuring traditional Días de los Muertos symbolic images, created by members of San Francisco's Precita Eyes Muralists Association, welcomes visitors to the exhibition. The mural is designed and directed by Susan Cervantes, founder and director of the association and a 30-year veteran of the San Francisco community mural art movement. Participating artists are Lynn Garcia, Patricia Rose, John Santos and Jaime Wynn.

Tradición, the first section of the exhibition, includes a traditional altar by Josefina Lopez in memory of her recently deceased husband, a collaboration between two local school groups incorporating traditional elements of the altar with video and mural painting, and Yolanda Garfias Woo's homage to the pre-Hispanic ancestors who originated the festival.

The second "passageway" central to the celebration of Días de los Muertos is through burla -- humor, play and satire. In this section, artists Raul Aguilar, Rubén Guzmán and Gerardo Peréz play on the laughter and trickery that occur when death comes to make fun of the living. Describing the skeletons he creates, Aguilar explains, "These toys poke fun at life and death and remind us that whether rich or poor, good or bad, smart or dumb, we all become skeletons at the end."

Finally, three contemporary installations use poetic gesture to explore the language of spirit, or ánima, as a meeting point between the living and the dead. Jaime Cortez creates an installation exploring the sadness of his grandmother's illness and death. Wura Okunji's altar invokes the spirit of an African woman who died on a slave ship in the Middle Passage to America. Tessie Barrera Scharaga creates an installation based on poetry in honor of her 16-year-old daughter, Amanda, who was killed in a car accident in 1999.

San Francisco cultural worker John Leaños is guest curator of the exhibition. Leaños holds a master of fine arts in photography from San Francisco State University. He has participated in numerous Bay Area exhibitions, public art projects and performances with Latino themes, and was curator of the Digital Mural Project at San Francisco's Galería de la Raza in 2000.

From left, standing: Raúl Aguilar, John Leaños, Gerardo Pérez and Museum Curatorial Aide Evelyn Orantes. Seated: Jaime Cortez

More about the artists:
The traditional altars in the exhibition were created by educators. Josefina Lopez recently retired from the Oakland Unified School District to devote her time to her Oakland store, Corazon del Pueblo, and to work on a film about Oakland's celebration of Días de los Muertos. Students from Oakland's Woodland Elementary School and fourth-and fifth-graders from St. Paul's Episcopal School in Oakland collaborated on the creation of an installation exploring their attitudes toward death and relationships with loved ones. The project was directed by teachers Margaret Chavigny and Robin Lovell, with help from artists Daniel Camacho and Salud Hernandez. Yolanda Garfias Woo, a San Francisco artist, ethnographer and multicultural educator, served as co-curator for the museum's Días de los Muertos exhibition in 1999. She is a textile artist specializing in Mesoamerican textiles, and has been making altars since the 1950s.

The three Bay Area artists whose installations explore humor are all natives of Mexico. Raul Aguilar is a self-taught painter and installation, conceptual and performance artist who cites comic books as a major influence on his art. He is currently a student in the multimedia studies program at San Francisco State University. Artist/educator Rubén Guzmán holds a bachelor's degree in graphic design from Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City, and this year received a grant to teach Mexican traditional art to Bay Area youth. Gerardo Peréz is a multimedia installation artist and performer who has exhibited in the Bay Area and performed with the street theater groups Art in Revolution and the Hexterminators.

Three artists bring varied backgrounds and approaches to the expression of spirit in the exhibition. Jaime Cortez is a writer, comic performer and visual artist in San Francisco. He is editor of the 1999 gay Latino anthology, Virgins, Guerrillas & Locas. Wura Ogunji is a photographer and installation artist who holds a bachelor's degree in anthropology from Stanford University and a master's in photography from San Jose State University. Tessie Barrera Scharaga worked in painting and ceramic sculpture before beginning to create symbolic mixed media installations incorporating sound and video with constructed or found objects.

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Trained volunteers from the community will give tours and "spotlight" talks in the exhibition.

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