EPMA celebrates the 2024 Día de los Muertos theme Raíces Ancestrales/Ancestral Roots: a celebration of the diversity of our region’s cultural heritage that transcends past and present, as well as geography. EPMA presents Indigenous influences (both pre- and post-Columbian contact) of Día de Los Muertos in our programming, encouraging the community to reflect on their own ancestral roots by honoring the lives, food, spirits, and traditions of their loved ones who have passed on.

As part of the Día de los Muertos celebration, the El Paso Museum of Art has commissioned Mexican American artist Jorge Rojas to create a new artwork for our community.

Jorge Rojas: Corn Mandala: Mictlān

Corn Mandala: Mictlān is the eighth in an ongoing series of artworks paying homage to maize, titled Gente de Maiz/ People of Corn. In these ephemeral, site-specific installations, the artist uses colorful natural corn kernels to produce patterns and symbols reflecting Mesoamerican and Native American traditions. This body of work explores maize’s cultural and spiritual significance, aiming to connect us with the rich heritage of Indigenous peoples in the Americas.

The mosaics, murals, ofrendas, and “alfombras” made of plants, seeds, and grains in Tepoztlan, Morelos, the state in Mexico where Rojas was born, serve as an essential source of inspiration for the artist. His design and creation process also reference mandalas from other spiritual traditions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, and their sacred art. Like those mandalas, Rojas is interested in the ritual involved in their production. This meditative process brings forth notions of slowing down, being present, and connecting with other humans or to a power beyond us.

Corn Mandala: Mictlān expands on the artist’s original works and focuses on Disk of Death, also known as Disk of Mictlantecuhtli (1-600CE), a pre-Hispanic sculpture possibly depicting Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec god of death and ruler of Mictlān, the underworld of Aztec mythology. Rojas draws inspiration from this enigmatic sculpture, found in Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Sun in 1963. The basaltic rock disk sculpture, partly destroyed, features a skull with the tongue out. The sculpture’s “halo” may allude to the setting and rising of the Sun, a cycle of the death and rebirth of the solar system perceived by many Mesoamerican civilizations.

Creating artwork that is less about himself as the artist and more about a shared experience, Rojas hopes his mandalas provide an opportunity for viewers to think about our relationship to the food we eat and where it comes from. They are meant to be a contemplative space for viewers to meditate on our human and spiritual connections, an opportunity to think about our ancestors, and a joyful celebration of abundance, fertility, and renewal of life.