Dealing with death the Mexican way

Mexico celebrates the Day of the Dead on 1 November

As Mexico holds its annual Day of the Dead celebrations, the BBC's Duncan Kennedy reports from a museum dedicated to the subject of death, believed to be the first of its kind.

Death - it's enough to scare the life out of you. Or at least that's what many Western civilisations would have you believe.

But in Latin America and especially in Mexico, they see things differently. Dying, while not to be recommended, is certainly not to be feared.

Rather it is to be celebrated as a chance to pass into an afterlife, a parallel existence that offers its own opportunities and challenges.

That is why artists in Mexico have, for centuries, picked up their brushes and chisels to paint and sculpt their impressions of death.

It is also why an entire museum in the central city of Aguascalientes has been dedicated to it.

Its curators believe it to be the first museum permanently and exclusively devoted to the artefacts of death.

Death is about moving on, not coming to an end Jorge Garcia Navarro Museum director

"We don't like death, as such," explains director Jorge Garcia Navarro.

"But in Mexico it is something that we look forward to. It is not taboo here to talk about it, to think about it. This museum gives people the chance to study its artistic history, its national relevance."

Set around a series of galleries in an old monastery, the museum allows death, in the form of human skulls, to stare you in the face from every angle.

Drunken skeletons

In one room, there are skulls created out of rock that dates from the 14th Century. Next to them are glass skulls from the same era. Both were made by the Aztecs.

"This obsession pre-dates the conquest by the Spaniards," said Mr Garcia Navarro. "When they arrived, they encouraged it."

In glass cabinets, hanging from walls, peeking out at you from round corners, deathly creations are everywhere.

In parts of Mexico, Day of the Dead traditions are still strong

But don't go looking for vampires or Dracula here. Death, in this place, is deadly serious, or at least up to a point.

You can also find depictions of skeletons playing basketball, or drunken skeletons engaged in a poker game.

There is also a more contemporary take on the subject: small ceramic skeletal figures in a variety of poses. In one, a skeleton carries out an operation on another skeleton. Death meets death, if you like.

None of this is meant to be disrespectful.

"In fact," says Mr Garcia Navarro, "it could not be more respectful. Death is about moving on, not just coming to an end. What could be more positive than that?"

In other words, death is a curtain raiser, not a last night end-of-season finale.

The museum includes works from different eras

No mortal coils to spring off here. Just springboards to more adventures.

There are plenty of Christian references. Crosses are a frequent template for the artists. But more often than not, Jesus has been replaced by a skeleton.

Controversial, perhaps, but not blasphemous. This goes beyond the Catholic Church's teachings on death that the people of Mexico also adhere to in their millions.

Biblical doctrine has it that you go to heaven or hell, and art has reflected this down the centuries. Michelangelo, for example, depicted heavenly existences. But generally absent from this work were the literal embodiments of death, the skeleton.

In this museum they are in each gallery.

To some, such works may verge on the pagan. But this is not about the worship of un-Godly entities. Instead, it is the appreciation of a life after death, the very bedrock of Roman Catholicism.

Chocolate skull

The Museum has nearly 2,000 artefacts. But you never have a sense of doom here. It is not a depressing place. Death, it is saying, need not always be tragic.

This etching is one of the most famous Day of the Dead images

You'll smile at the picture of the female skeleton wearing a feather hat or at another picture where the skull is filled with the familiar artwork of Coca Cola. The artist here saying, perhaps, that death is the real thing.

The museum even has its own gift shop. Take-away death that lets you buy a skull for the mantelpiece, a chocolate skull to eat (you won't have to worry about all those calories in the after-life), and, of course, the obligatory T-shirt, in any colour you like, as long as it is black.

The American statesman Benjamin Franklin once quipped: "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

Well, in this museum, taxes are for the living, death is for those way beyond that.