Greetings all.  Hope you all are enjoying your weekend.  I wanted to share a photo of our family altar this year.  Even though we typically do not light up the alter until the 1st and 2nd of November, I wanted to share this image with you since we were talking about altars during last week's lectures.  This year was especially difficult for our family as we lost close family members to Covid as well as losing five young high school students at the high school my wife works at as a guidance technician and where I sometimes substitute teach.  I wanted to make sure that we remembered our loved ones and honored them with the work of our hands in putting together this alter.  As you can all see, we made use of papel picador in the second and third tiers of the altar, we light candles and burn copal resin for our loved ones.  We also include the cempasuchíl flower and some of the foods and candies that our loved ones liked (mazapan, ron pope, ajonjoli, cacao, beans, rice, clavos, maiz, chiles secos, aniz, and other foods).  My father in law worked at Disneyland as a groundskeeper, so I have a Mickey Mouse figure planting seeds to remember him, in particular.  If any of you create an altar for Day of the Dead, I would love for you to reply and post a picture of it.  

 

Hello everyone!  My name is Christian Durán and I will be your TA for this amazing course on Chicana/x Art and Artists taught by Professor Alma Lopez.  My preferred pronouns are he/him/his.  I am a fifth year PhD student in the Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies here at UCLA.  My work focuses on transnational communities, deported childhood arrivals to the United States, in particular.  This work takes me to Mexico often as I attempt to understand the movement of people across borders through the creative ways they navigate return migration.  I am working on incorporating photography and film into my work and am carefully navigating the ethical concerns involved in photo-ethnographic work and documentary work.  

I am also an avid art collector, particularly Mexican folk art, and I am looking forward to learning alongside you about the many contributions of Chicana/x artists to the world of artistic expression and artistic resistance.  I am committed to your success in this course and am looking forward to speaking with all of you in class and during office hours.  See you soon.