By Pricila Flores
Nestled on the second floor in the Ethnic and Gender Studies area of the Davidson Library at UC Santa Barbara, under rows of colorful papel picado (punched paper), sits an altar.
In silence, five student women worked in tandem to decorate the altar with colorful candles and paper flowers. The background chatter of students talking with their friends and completing their homework didn’t break their respectful concentration.
The Día de los Muertes altar made its debut as an exhibition in collaboration with the Las Maestras Center, a cross-disciplinary public research institute housed in the divisions of Humanities and Fine Arts and Social Sciences.
The altar was created in conjunction with another exhibition in the library, Cultura Cura: 50 Years of Self-Help Graphics in East LA. Self-Help Graphics is a cultural arts center and studio in Los Angeles that has developed one of the most popular Dia de los Muertos events in Los Angeles, which has been the longest running public commemoration of its kind in the country for almost 50 years.
The five altarists (altar artists), — Alondra Bedoy, Alexia Duran, Vanessa Estrada Saldaña, Angeliza Sánchez Hernández, and Slyvia India-Perez, — all UCSB undergraduate students, spoke.
Four of the five artists sat down for an interview to describe their personal experiences, their ties to the altar, and the perspectives that shaped its creation.
Q: What are your years and majors?
Alondra: Third-year Chicana/Chicano studies.
Angeliza: Fifth-year Sociology and Chicana/Chicano studies double major.
Sylvia: Fourth-year History major.
Alexia: Fifth-year Sociology major.
Q: What was the inspiration behind the theme this year?
Angeliza: The overarching theme was La Cultura Cura (culture heals). We honed in on something that was meaningful for us, which was the concept of honoring home, as proxies. We were looking to those who have lost their lives in search of homes, those who have been displaced from their homes, and those whose wisdom and knowledge guide us home.
Q: How long did this altar take to create?
Angeliza: About 40 hours between the five of us.
Q: What are some of the elements that you felt that you needed to have?
Angeliza : For me, personally, the canya (sugar cane). It's very particular to the region where my family is from, Oaxaca.
Alexandra: A picture of my grandfather. He was a huge significant figure in my life. And I always think about my relationship with death in regards to him.
Sylvia: It was really important to be able to paint on the mantel (table cloth) both of my grandmas that have passed away.
A Día de los Muertes altar created by students on display in the library at UC Santa Barbara
Q: How did you get involved?
Angeliza: I took a class with Celia Herrera Rodriguez in the fall of last year [in Chicano Studies], and we actually made an altar.
Alondra: I also had that class where we made altares downtown. One of the people that helped with it is John Jairo Valencia. Over the summer he sent me an email asking if I was interested in working on the altar, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, of course, yes.”
Alexandra: I got involved through friendship with Angeliza. We met at an abolition circle at UCSB. It seemed natural to become part of this.
Sylvia: I got in because of Angeliza. She kept talking about it. They had a workshop for the mantel. And I was like, “Let me just do it. My therapist told me to get out (haha).” I ended up liking it, and just being here all the time.
Undergraduate student altar creators standing with their work in the Library at UC Santa Barbara.
Q: How does it feel being shown in the UCSB library?
Alexandra: This is the way we can take up space. The last three days of installation were really interesting. People would walk by and give us looks of curiosity and sometimes even make us feel strange.
Q: What do you hope people take away from this exhibition?
Angeliza: I hope that they are able to recognize that we do deserve to be able to take space here and that we do have these safe spaces as well. And that we can cultivate them and make them grand, and that we shouldn't be apologetic about it.
Sylvia: I hope that people take away from this that there’s a lot more meaning behind it. And it's something that's a part of our culture, and something that's tradition-based.
Q: What was the process of creating this altar?
Alondra: All of these symbols signify migrant children and the loss of land. There is a reason behind everything. We did not just throw stuff on there. It is important to note how important each of these elements is for our culture.
Q: What is your favorite part of the altar?
Alondra: My favorite part of the altar is the arc, just because it feels like we worked really hard on it. It was a lot of trial and error, and even once we thought we got it down, it still was not working - it kept falling over and it was a mess. So I think I just love it because of how much love, time and commitment we put into that piece.
Sylvia: For me, it would probably be just the little flower arrangements that were made by the little flower paper tissue on the screen.
Q: What would you guys tell students who feel like they can't take up space here at UCSB?
Angeliza: Speak out! We were recently talking about how silence can be a form of personal erasure. We need to be able to speak out.
Sylvia: I think it's important to just stay true to yourself and not assimilate to what everybody else is doing.
Pricila Flores is a fourth-year Language, Culture and Society major pursuing a minor in Professional Writing within the Journalism track at UCSB. She wrote this article for her Writing Program course Digital Journalism.