Dancing skeletons surrounded by art in Guyana 2025

 (This post refers to the exhibition Perspectives: Dialogue of a Brush which features work by artists Roann Pierre, Leon Hardowar, Tammy Walker, Chelsea Ramotar, Demion Mack, Sheliza Rampersad, Lisa Thompson and Pekahiah James. I regret that I did not note down names of the pieces properly as I was not planning to write this blog. I mean no disrespect to the artists).

Dancing Skeletons  

The two dancers have on the black leotards with the bones marked on them. They are covered in fabric with oranges and yellows. - in the shape of butterfly wings on one dancer They move to the La Llorona

 

One of Roann Pierre's stunning pieces is near them, also with black, with oranges and yellows .  The piece refers to the duality of existence (I think). Roann Pierre used fabric in the piece, and it provides this unintentional backdrop to the two dancers from Guyana moving to the music from Mexico in commemoration of El Día de los Muertos - Day of the Dead.  This was organised by the Mexican Embassy.

It has been a week of the dead. In Guyana, a bomb killed 6 year old Soraya Bourne, a speeding driver killed 15 year old Navindra Mahes. Children are not supposed to die.  

This week cancer took another cousin. Others died after Hurricane Melissa.  "Death is democratic" is a quote attributed to Mexican cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada. He had created La Calavera Catrina - the skull dressed up in European fashion as a satire on the Mexicans who forgot their Indigenous roots. 

 

Indigenous roots

 El Día de los Muertos has its origins in Indigenous pre-Hispanic cultures which believed in celebrating and remembering the dead. There are different traditions and practices with similarities around offerings of food, the building of an altar, the presence of marigold flowers, use of candles and including photos of those to be remembered.

One of Demion Mack's paintings shows a young man, lying down almost and holding a snake in a kind of cuddling way. Demion Mack wants to show the indigenous connections to the environment and natural world. It is a different portrayal from the distance between Man and the 'serpent in the Garden of Eden' . 

Many of the art pieces in the exhibition depict forest, animals, rivers , scenes of peace and stillness. There is a distance though between humans and the natural world,  not in this intimate way as shown in this painting with the man and the snake.

The dancers bring on skeletons in the finale of the dance performance. It is a joyful dance. There is a tradition in one part of Mexico where people recover the bones of relatives and arrange them so as to 'sit and have a meal with them'.  

So this intimacy with Death.. dancing happily with death, is not something we would probably do in Guyana, even though there are so many preventable deaths. 

 Many of the paintings and visual art pieces, and the ceramic pieces from Lisa Thompson reflect life and living. Some of the pieces reflect on souls and death, but I appreciate the overall feeling of living.

The Mexican Embassy created an altar in the side room. I did not stay long near the altar, with the beautiful decorations and arrangement of offerings and symbols. 

I felt like hanging around the paintings which showed life. 

Feature Photo by Erika Löwe on Unsplash