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Dead can dance
Day of the Dead at Forest Hills, Christian Jankowski at MIT, Ed Ruscha at Harvard
BY RANDI HOPKINS

Mexico’s indigenous peoples have long believed that the souls of the dead return each year to visit their families — a belief that occasions great joy and celebration and not, as you might fear, running for the hills screaming or cowering under the bed. The dead make their annual appearance on November 1 and 2, when folks throughout Mexico celebrate El Día de los Muertos by transforming gravesites into lavish shrines to the dearly departed adorned with colorful flowers, bowls of local fruits, and paper decorations depicting happy skeletons. Have anyone you’d like to welcome back? On November 2, the after-school cultural program La Piñata presents a traditional Mexican Day of the Dead outdoors at Forest Hills Cemetery, complete with music and dance. The event is free, and guests are encouraged to bring their own flowers, photos, and mementos to place on a large ceremonial altar.

Day of the Dead activities will also include a display of mini altars created to honor those who have suffered in recent natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the South Asian earthquake, and a table where visitors can write messages to their own dead and add them to a small ritual fire. This is the fifth year that the esteemed cemetery has celebrated the ancient holiday; it’s said that, if you’re open to these kinds of things, you can see the ghosts of cemetery denizens e.e. cummings and Anne Sexton dancing around in big sombreros after dark.

Berlin-based artist Christian Jankowski made a splash at the 2002 Whitney Biennial with his video The Holy Artwork (2001), which he created in collaboration with the preacher in a Texas-based televangelical church and filmed and broadcast as part of he church’s weekly television show. Jankowski has also collaborated on video and film projects with children, magicians, customs officials, artists, psychics, and therapists. The first large-scale survey of his work is on view in "Christian Jankowski: Everything Fell Together" at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center, through December 31, and on October 28, Nicholas Baume, the first curator to exhibit Jankowski’s work in the US (and now chief curator at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art), will give what promises to be an astute gallery talk on the show. (Christopher Millis’s review is on page TK.)

Handsome-art-star alert! Don’t miss the chance to hear artist Ed Ruscha, great icon of American art, talk about his life and work at Harvard’s Carpenter Center on November 10. Ruscha’s deadpan images of LA — its gas stations, its parking lots, and its Hollywood sign — changed the map of contemporary art starting in the 1960s, and he continues to dazzle in an understated way, most recently as the US rep to this year’s Venice Biennale.

"Day of the Dead" @ Forest Hills Cemetery, 95 Forest Hills Ave, Jamaica Plain | Nov 2 @ 4:30-6:30 pm | 617.524.0128 or www.foresthillstrust.org | Nicholas Baume walks through "Christian Jankowski: Everything Fell Together" @ MIT List Visual Arts Center, 20 Ames St, Cambridge | Oct 28 @ 6 pm | 617.253.4680 or web.mit.edu/lvac | Ed Ruscha lecture @ the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge | Nov 10 @ 6 pm | 617.495.3251 or http://www.ves.fas.harvard.edu/events/ruscha.html

 


Issue Date: October 28 - November 3, 2005
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