Altars Festival RVA 2022

Altars Festival RVA 2022.

This festival is a cross-cultural ancestor remembrance celebration inspired by Dia de los Muertos and many other ancestor remembrance celebrations from around the world.

Cultures worldwide have numerous ancestor remembrance traditions, but America does not, particularly because American ethnocide does not want people of color to collectively gather, remember their past, and retell their stories. Ethnocide is the destruction of culture while keeping the people, and the Altars Festival counters ethnocide by empowering people to remember, sustain, and celebrate their culture, while also providing a safe communal space for coping with the generational trauma and loss brought on by American ethnocide. We combat ethnocide through acts of cultural remembrance, activating ancestral knowledge, and creating new traditions that are relevant to our lived experiences.

The Altars Festival RVA 2022 was a collaboration of The Sustainable Culture Lab and Philanthropy Journal. The Sustainable Culture Lab and Philanthropy Journal have asked multiple local RVA artists through Art Works to create altars with the aim that the greater RVA community will see these examples, and become inspired to engage in their own, culturally relevant acts of remembrance.

Additionally, The Sustainable Culture Lab founder Barrett Holmes Pitner was be in attendance as a guest from Washington, DC and signed copies of his book The Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America.

Music was provided by Richmond musicians. The event was free and open to the public.