Photos

While in Merida we visited the Museum of Modern Art. Like most such museums it was a bit of a mixed bag – some things quite good, others a little derivative – but, in one room, this particular sculpture caught my eye.

Death occupies a somewhat different place in Mexican life and culture than it does in Gringo America, Europe, and most other places. Famously, there is the day of the dead (good information can also be found here). This is a time for communing with friends and family members who’ve moved on to the next world, which in itself is not an uncommon practice in the world. What is different is the aesthetic, which resembles that of Hallowe’en, but with a less cartoonish, more intense style. In many parts of the world communing with the dead tends to involve idealizing them (as angels for instance), but in Mexico we are reminded of reality constantly through a parade of skeletal figures and sugar skull-candies.

The Day of the Dead is a venerable institution, but death is inventive and finds new forms all the time. More recently, a growing number of Mexicans have come to worship a saint who first appeared around the 1960s: St. Death (more information can be found here). This is not a saint recognized by the Catholic Church. Portrayed as a skeletal woman, she is sometimes referred to as the “skinny girl.” An effigy of St. Death is kept in a street-side sanctuary, dressed in satin and jewellery, where she hears prayers and, many believe, answers them with miracles.

Indeed, such is Mexico’s special relationship with mortality, that Claudio Lomnitz-Adler, an associate professor of anthropology at New York University and the author of several books on Mexico, has published one entitled Death and the Idea of Mexico, whose sole focus is Mexico’s “fearless intimacy” with death.

To me, this sculpture seemed to capture some of the Mexican fascination with death. To be sure it represents struggle, and on that level is distinct from the sugar-candies of the Day of the Dead, but it nonetheless represents death, front and centre, as an important figure to be examined and understood, rather than something to be shied away from in polite company or rendered safe through parody.