DIA DE LOS MUERTOS / DAY OF THE DEAD 2023

The Toronto Día de los Muertos Collective, in partnership with Casa Maíz Cultural Centre, is thrilled to announce the return of our annual multi-day Día de los Muertos celebration for 2023. After months of uncertainty and numerous moments of adversity, we are beyond delighted to confirm that we will once again be able to come together to celebrate, honour, and pay tribute this year.

For 15 years, we have proudly offered this event free of charge to our community. In 2023—faced with difficult and heartbreaking financial challenges and limitations affecting artist spaces in Toronto—we turn to you with a request for assistance. Help us sustain the quality of the celebration and keep the vibrant, deeply rooted, and meaningful spirit of Día de Los Muertos alive by, for the first time in our history, making a nominal contribution to cover our costs by purchasing an entry ticket to the main celebration at the Wychwood Barns on October 28, 2023.

Your support means the world to us, and we hope you understand our request. Your contribution will help us cover essential expenses, support our artists, and maintain the respectfully festive spirit that makes Día de los Muertos so special.

To still make the space as accessible as possible, we invite young children and seniors to enter Barns free of charge. Please note that, due to the event's popularity, which we hope will continue unabated, we have again secured a legal-capacity venue, and access will be subject to the venue's capacity.

Join us between October 28 and November 5, 2023, as we gather to honour deeply rooted traditions, celebrate life, and remember those who have passed into the realm beyond. Experience meaningful ceremony, captivating performances, original artwork, and traditional food—we genuinely cannot wait to create another momentous and memorable Día de los Muertos Celebration with and alongside you.

EXPLORE OUTSIDE
While the interior of the Wychwood Barns has capacity limitations we must uphold, our Main Celebration—as you have come to love it—extends to external spaces as well. Whether you’re waiting for (re)entry or simply want to get a sense of the extent of the celebration as a whole, we invite you to explore the green and built spaces immediately surrounding the Barns. Ceremony, art, community, and culinary delights await you there!

The areas below are located just outside the Wychwood Barns and do not require any admission contribution.

Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) is a unique Mexican celebration that was declared part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2003. Mixing the solemn with the festive, the folkloric with the sacred, it acknowledges death’s universality and emphasizes the constant and inevitable interweaving of life and death.

The current moment—marked by war, sustained racial and gender violence, accelerated environmental destruction, and the effects of a global pandemic—invites the careful consideration of life’s fragility, especially in relation to long-standing systemic inequities. In light of this reality, the Día de los Muertos Collective deems the gathering of community—to celebrate life, honour the dead, and recognize the profound connections between the two—as a universal and essential need.

As always, “community” here includes not only those of Mexican, Latinx, or Indigenous heritage. While Day of the Dead is deeply rooted in Mexican culture and history, the Collective considers the celebrations to be of Tkaronto/Toronto: anyone interested in understanding and honouring these traditions forms part of the community that brings the festivities to life.

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Cover: design in loving memory of Alberto Cruz, Character design by Alberto Cruz.