Morbid Anatomy Presents at Observatory: Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) Party, Sunday November 1

Free this Sunday, November 1st? Looking for a way to nurse your Halloween hangover and ease back into the sad, post-halloween world? Well then! Why not join us for our first ever Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) Party at Observatory, where you will find for your delectation--among other things!--pan de muerto, champurrado, sugar skulls, music, Negra Modelo, traditional foods and crafts, an altar for communal contribution (see below), a Red Hook vendors taco truck supplying delicious and authentic foodstuffs (!!!), and much more. If you feel inclined to dress as a calavera–see bottom image, by José Posada–well then, all the better!

Co-hosted by myself, former Observatory lecturer and Morbid Anatomy guest-poster Salvador Olguin and professor Cristin Cash, its' sure to be a good time. You might even learn something! Full invitation follows:

Morbid Anatomy Presents at Observatory: Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) Party
Sunday, November 1st
Observatory, 543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215
4:00 PM–?
$5

Morbid Anatomy and Observatory formally request the pleasure of your company for our Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) party this Sunday (November 1).

Dia de Muertos is an annual festival celebrated in Mexico that seeks to ceremonially reunite the living with the dead. Traditional Day of the Dead ceremonies involve the preparation of an elaborate altar replete with flowers, candles and food that honor the dead to entice their return to the realm of the living. Mementos, relics and/or images of the dead are significant elements of altar decoration that both personalize and animate the altar as a site of memory and interaction.

For our Dia de Muertos party, we invite guests to bring an object or artifact that reminds you of a beloved thing no longer present to be placed on our community altar. The artifact can relate to a person, pet, idea, or anything lost that you would like to lure back to the land of the living, if just for one night.

This party was curated with the inestimable assistance and guidance of co-hosts Salvador Olguin and Cristin Cash.

Salvador Olguin’s work has been published in magazines both in Mexico and in the US. He is the author of Seven days, an interdisciplinary theatrical piece that celebrates the convergence of traditions and hybridism that characterizes Mexico’s fascination with mortality. He has worked extensively with Mexican cultural artifacts related with death, and he is currently performing research on the metaphoric uses of prostheses in literature and the visual arts, at New York University. He was born in Monterrey, Mexico and currently resides in Brooklyn.

Cristin Cash is Assistant Professor of Latin American Art History at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Her research focuses on art and politics in ancient Maya architecture and representations of the urban landscape in contemporary photography from Mexico and Cuba. At St. Mary’s College, she teaches courses in the Art and Architecture of the Americas from ancient times to the present, World Architecture and Museum Studies.

You can find directions by clicking here. Please RSVP to morbidanatomy@gmail.com, just so we know how much stuff to prepare. Hope to see you there!