Grief is the ultimate expression of Love. As each of us walks our own paths of grief and loss, we too can walk a path of healing and loving. - DeLa

The Portal for Grieving & Healing is the next in my evolution as a process artist, collaborator and cultivator. This iteration of the HEAL HEAR HERE space is interested welcoming others to participate and make words & things around a theme. What do we need to heal? How can we make space for the immense amount of feelings and the impact from the complex happenings over the last few years? How can we honor the loved ones we have lost? How can we use our hands, our words, our crafting of these to help all of us process, contemplate and release? Below, please find a short exploration of each of the 5 Altarches that are part of DeLa’s Portal for Grieving & Healing.

The Altarches

Bulaklakan - Flowers - This altarche is inspired by multiple things: 1 - the Filipino Folkdance called Bulaklakan. Bulaklak means flower and this dance has individual dancers holding the iconic flower arch above their heads. My Dad’s family is from the Bulacan region as well.

Whispers - This altarche is inspired by the words we wish we could say to our loved ones again - and the words we wish we could hear from them.

Grief/Healing Words - How do you heal? How do you walk through grief? Offerings for our journeys.

Faces & Names - We share images and names of loved ones passed to invoke their memories and celebrate them.

Shimmer - My oldest understanding of death is that we walk to the light, this altarache is here for us to shimmer and shine!

OTHER CONTEXT:

Over the last 20+ years folks have come to know my performance & theatrical work or my work as a cultural organizer, gathering practitioner and space maker. The Portal for Grieving & Healing has helped me to clarify that in this modality, my artist self DeLa is vitally important. Despite the legacy of colonialism in my last name, DeLa is the reclamation, redefinition, and affirmation of selves. DeLa - meaning “of the” in Spanish. “Of the” is a way to also see my broader work as a process artist, a dramaturge, an organizer; I am an artist who starts in a context - “OF THE” communities I am working with, the themes we are exploring, or the places we are cultivating. I am fountain of gratitude and light to Minda & D’Lo for taking this leap with me - as we each stretch and growing in the next iterations of our evolving selves.

In this context -DeL'a’s Portal for Grieving & Healing is created “of the” amazing artists, friends, and family who have participated in grief crafting circles, conversations, and making spaces in Jamaica Plain, MA and Los Angeles County, CA. Thank you to all of the amazing humans who contributed fabric remnants, hand-crafting, and other supplies. Thank you to my partner at the Armory Center for the Arts, the space that you provide, the Recycle Room, and the collaboration to birth of these altaraches. Thanks for the space to discover how to be in community with other folks in processes for grieving & feeling. Thank you to Nellie De La Cruz, Leslie Kawamura, Kristin Leigh, Erin O’Brien and Minda Sanchez Jariwala for your amazing support, supplies, and labor. Thank you for your vital contributions to the birth of these altarches.