Equal parts Day of the Dead and art celebration
If you go
If you go
Albuquerque Museum Community Event
WHEN: 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 2
1 to 2:30 p.m. Family Art Workshop. All ages are invited to make a mini-parade float to present during DJ party with Mario Ybarra Jr.
2 to 4 p.m. Community gathering with Mario Ybarra Jr.: Nuevo Complexican, a daytime Día de los Muertos celebration starring the acclaimed Los Angeles-based artist. Dance to old-school R&B records that inspired Ybarra’s parade float “Music My Mom Played While Cleaning the House.” With local food trucks, music, community art making and more.
5 to 8 p.m. Conversation and film with Sterlin Harjo and Cannupa Hanska Luger. Award-winning Seminole/Muscogee filmmaker Sterlin Harjo (“Reservation Dogs”) will introduce a screening of his Indigenous artist focused documentary film “Love and Fury.”
WHERE: Albuquerque Museum, 2000 Mountain NW
HOW MUCH: Free at 505-243-7255
About the artists
About the artists
Sterlin Harjo, co-created the Emmy Award-nominated TV series “Reservation Dogs” and has directed multiple feature films and documentaries exploring Indigenous experiences. A founding member of the 1491s, a Native sketch comedy troupe, Harjo has received numerous awards for his work in film and television. In an October New York Times story about the 2024 MacArthur Fellowships, Harjo (a recipient) said, “The dreams that I had when I was young about changing the world and about changing representation and about showing us as real human beings, all of that meant something and it did change the world.”
Cannupa Hanska Luger, an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold as well as Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota, was born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. Now based in Glorieta, Luger creates monumental installations, sculptures and performances incorporating ceramics, steel fiber, video and repurposed materials. He has been exhibited at both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the 2024 Whitney Biennial.
Mario Ybarra Jr., a former University of California at Irvine art professor, is a Los Angeles-based conceptual artist combining street culture with fine art to reflect Mexican American experiences. Ybarra’s work examines excluded social norms, often focusing on complete environments, histories and stories. He is the founder of Slanguage Studio artist group and has significantly impacted his community through art education. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at London’s Tate Museum. and the 2008 Whitney Biennial.
The Albuquerque Museum is hosting a free community event featuring shoebox parade floats, a DJ spinning Motown and a screening by the acclaimed filmmaker Sterlin Harjo (“Reservation Dogs”).
Equal parts Day of the Dead and a celebration of Native American and Latinx artists, the party runs from 1-8 p.m. on Saturday, complete with food trucks and music.
Visitors will get to design their own art projects in the form of miniature parade floats, museum curator Josie Lopez said.
“We’ll provide the materials; shoeboxes and different kinds of paper,” she said. “Hopefully, they’ll bring their own photographs.”
The individual works will reflect the museum’s installation of Mario Ybarra Jr.’s full-sized parade float dedicated to his mother.
“She’d clean the house every Saturday while listening to her favorite music,” Lopez said.
The piece features a platform where visitors can attach their own hand-made flowers, she added.
“On top of that, it spins with marionettes of his mother. It’s mostly Motown music. It is totally nostalgic,” Lopez added.
The Seminole/Muscogee filmmaker Harjo will screen his latest film “Love and Fury,” a tribute to Indigenous artists.
“The film follows several (Indigenous) artists as they navigate the art world,” Lopez said. Co-creator of the TV series “Reservation Dogs,” Harjo and the Glorieta-based artist Cannupa Hanksa Luger (Standing Rock Reservation) will launch a live audience recording of the “Broken Boxes Podcast” series “Long Con,” an ongoing conversation between the two artists.
“Obviously, in terms of the art project, there’s going to be a lot of celebrating and creating and engaging in material that is hands-on,” Lopez added. “There will be some interesting insights into the art world.”
