Building Día de los Muertos altars in solidarity with Palestine invites us not only to remember the over 43,000 lives lost in Gaza but also to create a space that refuses to separate past and present, grief and resilience, San Francisco and Gaza. Under the theme Bearing Witness: An Expression of Solidarity, Love, and Justice for Palestine, this year’s Día de los Muertos exhibition at SOMArts encourages viewers to move beyond the overwhelm of ongoing war, allowing grief to transform into resistance and hope.
“Care is justice at this point. I don’t think there is a way to separate them,” said Mission artist-activist Rio Yañez, who co-curated the exhibition with Bridgètt Rex. Together, they selected approximately 18 finalists from a record-breaking 89 proposals for altar designs. Artists range from individuals or collaborative pairs to entire families. The exhibition makes room for it all — brokenheartedness, rage, and senseless loss, but also the resilience, play, and beauty of a people and culture who refuse to be defined by their suffering.
“It is a struggle to find people and galleries who will take Palestinian work,” said Palestinian artist Ren Allathkani. “Since the genocide began, I couldn’t talk about my culture at all.” Her altar includes traditional tatreez (embroidery) on painted canvas, one depicting a Palestinian woman gathering wheat, another showing children playing in the sea. “When everything else is getting bombed, they can’t take away the ocean.”
“Play is not trivial,” said Dania Cabello, whose altar is made up of a pyramid of soccer balls. “It is as important as breathing and eating.” She describes the images that have been seen throughout the media of children finding a way to play, not in a rigid two-hour block after school for soccer practice, but instead building kites, dancing, or creatively employing fallen telephone wires for their games. “Play is often seen as a luxury, but it is truly fundamental and we need it to live,” Cabello added.
Palestinian identity and ethnicity are “being erased in all forms of existence,” said Allathkani. The Día de los Muertos exhibition is a resounding objection to any such attempt. Marigolds and candles adorn altars alongside bowls of keys, bottles of olive oil, and offerings of zaatar — a blend of tradition and solidarity.
“It’s dangerous and beautiful work,” said contributing artist Beth Benson. Yañez’s father, René Yañez, was the founding curator of the Día de los Muertos exhibition. A lynchpin of the Mission community, he was a cofounder of Galería de la Raza and a leader within the Bay Area Chicano arts movement and the Mission Cultural Center, among other spaces. “He is the one who really started to push artists,” said Jos Sances, a close friend of Yañez and a currently exhibiting artist. “For Rio [René’s son] to do this show for Palestine is bold and principled. His dad would be proud.”
In a world inundated with digital media, “there is real power in being able to see a work of art and not have it be through a screen,” said Yañez. The exhibition takes full advantage of this, with installations inviting not only viewing but participation. At one altar, viewers are invited to write messages of hope on strips of cloth and weave them into a larger hung fabric punctured with holes. This act of makeshift mending, both symbolic and literal, challenges viewers to hold the tension of interconnectedness between the local and global, shared suffering and collective hope.
“When we have a broken heart, it’s the same rhythm but a different song,” said artist Adrián Arias. His altar, a collaboration with musician Anaís Azul, features an anatomical heart painted across three panels, forming an intimate room. In its center rests a stethoscope and a booklet. “For me, the sound of the heart is very important. It is a musical rhythm. It is what keeps me alive,” he says. Visitors are invited to place the stethoscope on their own hearts, letting their pulse add a visceral rhythm to their viewing.
“This show has always been about embracing a diverse view about what it means to create an altar for someone who has passed away,” said Yañez. “Diverse in creative approach and diverse in the artists that make them, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
And that seems to be just what he, Bridgètt, and SOMArts have collaborated to create — a space where anyone is invited to put back together that which has been broken, to pause long enough to hear their own heartbeats, to realize this pulse is somehow connected to the smile of unconditional love spilling forth from the altar featuring the portrait of Cecil Williams, the beloved late reverend of the Tenderloin’s Glide Church. It is connected to the eyes of the Palestinian journalist in the photo at the neighboring altar, and it is connected to every soccer ball in the pyramid that stretches skyward to honor loved ones in a way reminiscent of the original pyramids, tombs for the Gods. This recognition, and the mere willingness to pause for a moment to visit this exhibition, is a resistance to the pull of rush within a city that often moves at a speed which threatens to outpace compassion. Instead, viewers of this exhibition do not rush forward, but gaze back at our ancestors and inward to the ancestors we are becoming.
