Día de los Muertos

Lighting the Dark was an annual celebration I organized with Chuckanut Transition, a community resilience group dedicated to reconnecting community life with the seasonal rhythms of place through art, learning, ritual, and gathering. Drawing inspiration from fire-centered traditions found throughout the world, I envisioned the event as a way to honor communal bonfires as spaces for purification, storytelling, intention-setting, and renewal.

For the 2020 Lighting the Dark celebration, we created a Día de los Muertos-inspired ritual performance exploring themes of death, loss, remembrance, healing, and rebirth. Through sculpture, procession, ceremony, and fire, we invited participants to reflect on the cycles of endings and beginnings that shape both individual and collective life.

Día de los Muertos is a Mexican tradition dedicated to remembering and honoring loved ones who have died. For the event, we created a large pumpkin sculpture inspired by the Northern European jack-o'-lantern tradition, historically associated with honoring the dead and guiding spirits through the darkness. We held the celebration near Imbolc, the Celtic festival that marks the turning toward spring and is traditionally associated with fire, purification, and renewal. Imbolc is also connected with Brigid, the Celtic goddess of the hearth, creativity, and transformation.

To help guide the evening's performance, I created a giant Brigid puppet that led participants through a ritual of healing and renewal before the ceremonial burning of the Día de los Muertos sculpture.

As part of the gathering, I also acknowledged and honored the Nuwaha people, whose ancestral presence remains woven into the landscape of the greater Alger area. By bringing together traditions from multiple cultures, the event sought to foster remembrance, gratitude, and a deeper connection to place, ancestry, and the cycles of renewal that sustain community life.