For Immediate Release
September 29, 2009

Xavier Cortéz

The Mexican culture is one of the few that continues to celebrate death as a continuum of life.

Annual “Day of the Dead” or “Dia de Los Muertos” celebrations combine profound spiritual rituals with more artistic forms of expression like song, dance, poetry, arts and crafts. They feature colorful adornments, lively reunions at family burial sites, preparation of certain foods and offerings to the departed laid out on special altars.

“There is too much misinformation and not enough historical context about the significance of Days of the Dead amongst our cultures,” said Xavier Cázares Cortéz, a local artist and advocate for arts education who has spent many years exploring the cross-cultural significance of the celebration.

Currently, he is teaching a series of classes titled “Good Mourning: Celebrating Mexico’s Days of the Dead,” through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute sponsored by the University of California, Riverside Extension.

OSHER classes are for adults, 50 years and older, who want enjoy college-level courses without worrying about tests, grades, entrance exams or prerequisites.

Students will explore the history and interrogate the myths and misconceptions surrounding the two-day celebration, Nov. 1 and 2, when the dearly departed return to Earth to visit friends and relatives, according to Mexican culture.

Cortéz said that hundreds of years ago, Europeans would celebrate death as they celebrated life, with feasts and picnics at their loved ones’ gravesites well into the time following the fall of Rome.

But over the years, the European cultures and rituals became sanitized.

“While death is a universal concept, the way it is treated culturally gets to some salient differences among all cultures,” he said.

Cortéz, who lives with his family in San Bernardino, co-founded Day of the Dead community celebrations at the Palm Springs Art Museum beginning in 1994.

Cortéz is working with the Mexican Consul in San Bernardino planning an elaborate 2010 celebration marking Mexico’s 200 years of independence from Spain and 100 years since the revolution.

He also is a champion of arts education reform.

“We—nationally, and otherwise—need to update our arts education curriculum so it becomes a reflection of our times and meets the needs of contemporary artists, historians, and viewers,” Cortéz said.

That was the message he delivered in 2006 as a panelist at the National Art Education Association conference in Chicago.

Born in Yuma Arizona, Cortéz earned his art degree at Cal State San Bernardino.

Typically, his works are conceptual. Some of them consist of collages of words and everyday items mounted on walls.

“I believe objects people collect are psychophysical maps,” Cortéz said. “In a way, they’re these eccentric portraits of humanity.”

For further information about his class or to download an OSHER course catalog, go to www.extension.ucr.edu/olli or call 951-827-5801.