Partnership with The Met
Devin Osorio and Tomorrow's Ancestors are honored to present What We Carry Forward, a participatory ofrenda for this year's Día de Muertos at The Met Cloisters. This installation transforms a traditional altar into a community-authored space of remembrance, growing over time through communal care, connection, and creation. Our series of workshops places the traditions of Día de Muertos in conversation with Dominican carnival practices, tending to the connection between ancestral practices in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. In centering these acts of making – papier-mâché, paper flowers, portraiture, candles, and papel picado - our ofrenda consecrates participatory crafts as ancestral worship, revealing how the necessity to remember, celebrate, and carry loved ones forward is deeply human.
The completed ofrenda will be presented at The Met Cloisters' Día de Muertos celebration on Sunday, October 11. Join us to create it together:
Open Studio — Light : Illuminating Presence
Saturday, September 19, 2026 | 1-4pm — The Met Cloisters, Gallery 6, Pontaut Chapter House
Decorate candles with patterns, symbols and written intentions that light the way for those we wish to remember to return to collective presence.
Open Studio — Bloom : Floral Messages
Sunday, September 27, 2026 | 1-4pm — The Met Cloisters, Gallery 6, Pontaut Chapter House
Inspired by the marigolds of Día de Muertos and the symbolic language of flowers across cultures, create paper flowers dedicated to people, places or traditions you wish to remember.
Papel Picado : Messages in the Wind — with Blanka Amezkua
RSVP only.
Led by artist Blanka Amezkua, who authored the ofrenda for The Met Cloisters' Día de los Muertos celebration in 2024 and 2025, participants learn the traditional technique of chiseling papel picado, tissue paper flags strung above homes, altars, and streets for celebrations across Mexico. Suspended overhead, the paper banners will become a canopy carrying personal stories, symbols, and collective remembrance.
Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art