Come Honor Your Dead

Story Concept:
An exhibit whose purpose is healing for all our relations, our lost loves and friends, Our loss of communities, jobs and social norms. The Event is part ritual an honoring a memorial celebration inspired by The Day of the Dead (Spanish: Día de Muertos) i.e a Mexican holiday observed throughout Mexico and around the world in other cultures and through engaged art and landscapes/soulscapes. An experience that provides a poetic space for the imagination to flood into and honors the traditions, the essence of the Day of the Dead ritual, of memorials, of art forms Memento Mori, of objects to engage remembering, that bring comfort and gratitude, the soul of the celebration is a memorial to a person or a friend of a loved one. An Altar that embody transition, death becomes channels embodying our loved ones creating solace and loving memorials.
An engaged art form where visitors can offer small written notes to those who are gone as a way of letting their love find a place of ritual. A place to bring images and placed on the altar. Rituals for finding new dying conversations for populating a death positive culture and what we are calling art and death literacy.
This new exhibit space Nadazul’s gallery in the Foundation explores relational art forms, words and space as an entering the soul-scape visual interplay, a liminal entry into our current period with the new Memento Mori and Day of the Dead arts. BIO Maria Epes.
Maria is a feminist artist working in the medias, art installation, sculpture, printmaking, and works on paper and artists’ books. Her specific focus is on expressions of the body, in life and in death, with concern for the equality of women and the acceptance of death as part of life. Her work has been exhibited and cataloged internationally at venues including The National Museum of Women in the Arts, MOMA New York, ABC No Rio, Ceres Gallery, Franklin Furnace, La Mama La Galleria, and is represented in the Feminist Art Database at the Brooklyn Museum. She holds a B.F.A. from Cornell University and M.F.A. from California College of the Arts and is based in Asheville, North Carolina.  Works to bringing healing, art to inform the sacred. A poetic walk, a parade with musicians in our Greenway and River Arts District for imagination to flood into…sacred rupture. Now we must create a sacred space for our new sacred story. Works like altars become channels embodying our loved ones creating solace and loving memorials.
Maria Epes the book
www.mariaepes.com

The Event: Come Honor your Dead.  A Ritual of Remembering

http://nadazul.org

       Nadazul Gallery at Foundation Studios 27 Foundy St

       River Arts District / Asheville NC

       Event Dates Nov 5  – Dec 6,  2021  noon to 6 daily