Celebrate Dia de los Muertos with CLS!

Featuring Artist Monica Vega

October 20, 2020

Meet Altarista/Altar Artist Monica Vega

Monica Vega is an artist specializing in community-based projects including the creation of altars, or altares. As an altarista and activist, Monica has worked with various iconic Twin Cities arts and cultural institutions such as Centro Tyronne Guzman, the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, the Weisman Art Museum, and the Minnesota History Center.

Originally from Mexico City, Monica now works for a nonprofit in the Twin Cities where she teaches art to children, mothers, and older adults. As an altarista, Monica gathers her artistic practice and inspiration from her familial roots in Michoacan, Mexico. The Day of the Dead is deeply personal to her and she loves teaching people of all ages about its meaning and traditions.

Learn more about Monica and her work.

Virtual Altar

This year, together with artist Monica Vega, the Department of Chicano & Latino Studies is dedicating our Day of the Dead altar to Latina/os who passed on from complications related to COVID-19. We included photographs and names of eleven coronavirus victims from our Latina/o community whose moving stories were made public in the US media. Together, we say their names, and we remember their lives by honoring them in our Chicano & Latino Studies ofrenda, offering them food, special items, water, salt, marigolds, candles, and ceremonial objects of significance to our Latina/o/x community. During a year when our community has faced disproportionate and devastating losses due to COVID-19, we affirm our commitment to remembering all the victims who have suffered and those who have died as the virus has traveled into our homes and barrios. While it is a tragic injustice that these lives ended abruptly and prematurely as a result of the pandemic, we remind our community that we must take care of ourselves and of each other this winter and until the pandemic is under control. As Chicano Teatrista Luis Valdez expressed when he explained the Mayan concept of In Lak Ech in his book “Pensamiento Serpentino”:

Tú eres mi otro yo.
You are my other me.
Si te hago daño a ti,
If I do harm to you,
Me hago daño a mi mismo.
I do harm to myself.
Si te amo y respeto,
If I love and respect you,
Me amo y respeto yo.
I love and respect myself.

To honor COVID safety guidelines, our altar exhibit and Day of the Dead celebration are entirely virtual this year. We encourage our comunidad to honor the victims that this pandemic has claimed by continuing to mask up, by following social distancing guidelines, and by listening to the advice of our medical professionals. Stay connected in creative ways such as email, snail mail, air hugs, phone calls, or by gathering virtually. Stay apart but connected por un ratito so that we can all come together to honor our ancestors and to celebrate the Day of the Dead in person next year. With solidarity and respect, in loving memory of: