"What does DDLM mean to Chicanos?" Jimmy asks.
Michael Sedano
Jimmy O'Balles relaxed with a tequilazo in one hand, a fish taco in the other, relating the background on Plaza de la Raza's (click) impending Día de los Muertos art exhibition. With August's blockbuster show Futuro y Pasado (LINK) closing, curator O'Balles told Plaza's director, Maria Jimenez, O'Balles' idea for a 2022 DDLM show.
"Why not this year?" Maria Jimenez asked.
Like a high school boy invited to his first Sadie Hawkins Day dance, Jimmy O'Balles eagerly accepted the date. But this isn't Jimmy's first date; he's been one of the most active Chicanarte curators since long before plague-time sent arte behind locked doors. Jimmy was lead-curator of Plaza de La Raza's Futuro y Pasado (link to La Bloga's review).
Why not this year? O'Balles gets on the phone.
In less time than it takes to say "hot tortilla con mantequilla", artists were saying what they usually say, when there's a DDLM exhibition, or a Frida show:
"Yes! I have something ready."
"Yes, I will do something. When do I have to turn it in?" and they got to work.
Sunday was turn-in-your-work day for the November 1 show.
It comes as no surprise that every important artist in Southern California has something to say for the popular cultural observation.
Día de Muertos, they say in Mexico, or Día de los Muertos, como we say over here, creates an important cultural and economic opportunity for raza being raza.
DDLM is when "Latino" and "Latinx" pull off Hallowe'en camouflage to unmask Mexicans.
DDLM, as with all Chicana Chicano phenomena, has three beginnings.
Indigenous culturas celebrated death, dying, and burial, in manners distinctly American. The second Beginning, in 1521, coincides with European colonizers imposing Roman Catholic practices like Día de los Difuntos. Europeans then, Anglos now, fear death; their religion mollified cultural terror. Indigenous Americans didn't "fear" death.
Using native understanding, local cultura hybridized and fused what was permitted by the colonizers to develop 700 years of tradition.
Fifty years ago, DDLM in the EUA has its third beginning. In los United States, a Catholic nun, Sister Karen Boccalero, convinced movimiento-motivated artists working with Self-Help Graphics & Art (link), to launch what becomes the oldest, longest-running DDLM event in the nation. Self-Help runs a month-long, multi-venue moveable DDLM feast in 2021, link above.
Profit drove growth and in 2021, Día de los Muertos attracts notice in cities across North America, wherever la Chicanada has set down roots, we have dead people to remember, and we remember our muertos our way, fusing Mexica and Mexicano iconography with cosas de acá de este lado.
Basking in the prospect of what's sure to be yet another triumphant exhibition, Jimmy O'Balles grabs another taco before turning to ask that question, "What does Día de los Muertos mean to Chicanos?"
"Damned if I know. We didn't do DDLM where I grew up, and I didn't know DDLM was a big holiday until I came to LA in the seventies." If I'd been quicker, I would have just asked, "Jimmy, what is Chicanarte?"
He would easily have turned handed me the list of artists he's recruited for Plaza's DDLM show and said, "This is Chicana Chicano arte (at this time in this place)."
That's what DDLM means to Chicanos, Jimmy. Same thing.
Chicano culture is not monolithic!
I haven't been following academic literature so it's been a long time that I've seen that caveat. Do people still say "Chicano culture is not monolithic"?
How do Chicanos do culture? Let me count the ways: Chicago Chicano culture. Kansas City Chicano culture. The Mission Chicano culture. Boyle Heights Chicano culture. Westside, Sawtelle Chicano culture. Redlands Chicanada. Your neighbor's Chicano culture. Lulu Smith née Lourdes Gonzales' Chicano culture. Hasta there's a Día de Muertos yacht cruise on the Hudson in NYC this year. I haven't seen if Coors is doing a Drinko de Mayo for DDLM yet. I bet Disney's going to make a killing every year on CoCo.
This year, gente, let's be Monolithic all over the place!
Get Academic with your DDLM. Study how sustaining native traditions strengthens internal colonies. Investigate substantial rhetorical potency in DDLM's cultural affirmations. Compare Mexica to Chicanarte semiotics of the craneo. Look at ways rituals like DDLM, or toy babies in cakes, perform acts of Identification. Get a term paper out of DDLM, or extra credit by attending an event.
Get Aesthetic. Paint your face like a calavera. Buy a book of Posada's calaveras, learn to recognize the real thing and become conversant with the caricatures. Write a Calavera poem. Be a participant in local DDLM pageants. Be a customer at a gallery. Hang a piece of original arte on your wall. (It could be a hummingbird or a butterfly.)
Get Social: Go out dressed-up since you've painted your face. And spend lots of money at arts&crafts sales because there's no economy like the local economy. Tell your friends all about Posada and they'll pick up the tab.
Get Diverse: Find an open-minded not-Chicanx and explain DDLM to them. Tell a monolingual why this is funny, be sensitive pendejo: "No hay trikotri. No kendy. Ya no chinguen." Put leprechaun hats on your Catrina and Alebrijes in March.
Get Creative: Artists, whip out some calaveras, build inventory for next year's last-minute opportunities. Plaza's locked up now but there will be other Jimmy's. Órale, I haven't seen a Santa and Rudolf calavera yet. Decorate the fireplace mantle with more than pumpkins. Buy a Catrina or start a collection of Alebrijes, be the envy of all your non-ethnic amigxs. Rockefeller Center this year has some giant Alebrijes in the plaza. Buy a book on Alebrijes.
Get Cultural: Tell your friends about cucui, espantos, why raza say qepd, and, !Presente! Build an altar, be private or public. Honor your ancestors. Burn sage; the ancestors are in the smoke. Remember who you are.
No comments:
Post a Comment