Caption: An ofrenda, or altar, is put up inside of the Wexner Center for the Arts to honor deceased relatives, friends and even pets, for anybody in the community that wants to remember them. Credit: Courtesy of Fernanda Diaz-Basteris.
The Wexner Center for the Arts’ Día de los Muertos event hosted in collaboration with Ohio State’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Latinx Studies Program and Center for Latin American Studies, begins with a greenhouse in the summertime.
Javier Jasso, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Outreach Chair, said that planning for the event begins months prior, when marigolds are planted by Latin American Studies professor and event coordinator Fernanda Diaz-Basteris to be picked the day before the event. The marigolds will end up on an ofrenda, or altar, inside the Wex that encourages the community to celebrate their deceased loved ones together.
The Wexner Center for the Arts fourth annual Day of the Dead event is on Friday from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., and welcomes people who have celebrated or have never celebrated before to engage in the holiday through music, dance, food, poetry and hands-on activities.
“It’s just an incredible event where we get to celebrate this very meaningful tradition with Mesoamerican roots with the Columbus community,” Jasso said. “And so, it could be shared with people that have altars in their home, or that honor their loved ones in some fashion, or people who have never experienced this before. It’s both open to the campus, but also open to the greater central Ohio Latino community, and everyone is invited.”
Jasso said that the event planners have been working hard on the event, from a dance group that has upwards of 20 dancers, to even meticulously crafting the playlist music. They have collaborated with local food vendors Panadería La Oaxaque?a and Masa Mexican Grill to provide food like tamales, hot chocolate and pan de muerto, or the Day of the Dead bread.?
Jasso called Diaz-Basteris and Paloma Martinez-Cruz, the chair of Ohio State’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the brains of the event.
There is also a different local artist highlighted at the event every year, this year being Rebecca Richardson, a comic artist and educator at the Billy Ireland Museum. Alongside art from Richardson, there is a coloring page contest that features Brutus the Buckeye’s face as a calavera or candy skull, with prizes ranging from sports tickets to Amazon gift cards.
“Another part of this celebration is going to the altar, maybe contributing to it if that’s calling to you,” Jasso said. “You get to see everyone celebrating their loved ones. It could be maybe a recent loss, or I always put something for my grandma, so that’s meaningful to me.
Kim Lopez, an Ohio State professor who teaches “Sociology of Death and Dying” and a trained grief therapist, said an event like the Wexner Center for the Arts’ Día de los Muertos, is impactful to those grieving.
“It’s the idea that the memory and the bonds and the connections we have with them are so important that we have to honor them, when we find ways to do that ritually: bringing people together to share food, to create artwork, to have music, to enjoy and celebrate,” Lopez said. “And that’s one of the beautiful things about the Day of the Dead is that it is not just a somber day. It’s a day of really uplifting one another about the love that we have for our past, our ancestors.?And the hope that we’ll be remembered as well. And that’s the key.”
Jasso also said that the event is important to introduce people to the Wexner Center for the Arts and to feel like they have a place to belong at Ohio State, and that Day of the Dead public events are encouraging to see, despite efforts to minimize its importance.
“These types of community events help you find people, information, that give you that sense of ‘I’m not alone in this crazy city, in this crazy world,’ ” Jasso said. “It’s just great to feel the sense of community, especially, [for] me personally.”
Lopez said the beauty of cultural traditions surrounding death comes through how it allows deceased loved ones to live on, whether that is through a gravesite, shrine or ofrenda.
“By inviting them back, whether it’s in a spiritual form or just in symbolic form, we get to have that connection for as long as we live,” Lopez said. “That’s the amazing part about having the Wexner Center doing this inviting of anyone from any background to come and explore the ofrendas, make some art, listen to some music, have some food and the bread of the dead,” Lopez said. “Having all that is an opportunity to say, grief can look a lot of different ways.”
