Alvaro Alvarez: '46 Renacimientos' Día de Muertos exhibit

At the height of the 2008 housing crisis, 46 high-rise construction projects were abandoned from Tijuana to Ensenada. The Coastal Corridor of Tijuana, Rosarito and Ensenada (COCOTREN) is a chain of proposed developments along a 90-mile stretch of Baja's coast.

Architectural artist Alvaro Alvarez says the developments were meant to bring pride to the Baja region and provide affordable luxury housing for Americans. It was pitched as the largest development in the region, designed to attract foreign investors and banks to fund the projects.

Alvarez immortalized those “skeletons” through art, creating sculptural paintings to honor each abandoned building. The project, titled "46 Renacimientos," doesn't have an ideal translation into English, Alvarez says, but likens it to "revivals" or "rebirths."
—Julia Dixon Evans, KPBS

From the organizers:
“46 Renacimientos” is an art project that tells the story of the COCOTREN phenomena taking place at the Coastal Corridor of Tijuana Rosarito and Ensenada, in Baja California, where 46 large-scale buildings where abandoned halfway through construction in 2008 due to the financial recession. 46 Renacimientos is a multi-piece project of forty-six textural paintings in black and white, using paper, wood, plastic, gesso, and ink; each representing a corresponding building on the COCOTREN. These will be presented during a Day of the Dead ceremony on Saturday November 2nd, 2024 in San Ysidro, California. This lecture is an opportunity to present the project and preview samples of the artworks prior to the one-day event in November.