Alvaro Alvarez: '46 Renacimientos' Día de Muertos exhibit

Arts & Culture

Día de Muertos exhibit revives Baja's abandoned buildings as lost souls

Julia Dixon Evans

Listen • 23:35

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 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." Read more.
—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.