The Douglas Hyde Gallery is usually associated with austere exhibitions of cutting-edge contemporary art, but if you visit it between now and December 5th you could be forgiven for thinking you've landed in the middle of a Mexican fiesta.
In a way, that's what it is, for Behind the Mask: Mexican Devotions is a celebration of Mexican popular religious art. There is even a vast, monumental altar, created in situ by Eugenio Reyes Eustaquio, a carpenter and professional altar-builder from Puebla state.
With ceramicist Tiburcio Soteno Fernandez, he will be working in the gallery over the next two weeks. His altar will be an extraordinary construction, utilising 100 yards of meticulously pleated and pinned white satin on a wooden framework, embellished with "flowers, holy pictures, photographs, plaster figures of angels and weeping children, dishes of food, sugar sheep and candles".
It will be augmented by market stalls packed with a prodigious collection of images and objects, most of them delighting in garish colours, gloss, glitter and every kind of visual extravagance. One stall is devoted to souvenirs of Our Lady of Gaudalupe, the Patron Saint of Mexico, another to the masses of toys and trinkets made for the Days of the Dead. An entire wall will be covered with papier-mache dance-masks used in religious fiestas, another with hand-cut stencilled banners on metallic paper.
The show's curator, Chloe Sayer, observes, "Mexican popular culture is fantastically baroque. In Ireland the trend has been to simplify religious iconography, to get rid of the statues. Visitors to this exhibition will not be used to seeing so many angels crammed into one place." At home, Eugenio's altars are built for the Days of the Dead, the festival of All Souls and All Saints on the first two days of November.
"It coincides with Hallowe'en," Chloe says, "but it's not spooky like Hallowe'en. The souls of the dead have divine permission to visit their friends and relatives, and the living receive the souls of the dead in a splendid, generous way. It's very healthy, very celebratory, there's a sense of contact with loved ones." The mood is typical of the Mexican attitude to death. She quotes the poet Octavio Paz: "The Mexican is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his favourite toys and his most steadfast love."
Not, she emphasises, that they value life any less. "It's just that the acceptance of death as part of life can seem strange to us, because from our cultural perspective death is largely a taboo subject." Although linked to the Catholic calendar, the Days of the Dead also relate to pre-Conquest rituals. The fusion of old and new is typical. Catholicism is the main religion, but it is built on and coloured by the foundations of older religions - sometimes literally, as the stones of demolished temples and pyramids were used to build Catholic churches.
"Many Mexican people are fervently, passionately religious. This was as true prior to the Spanish Conquest of Mexico in 1521 as it was afterwards, and the roots of the popular religious culture that we see today extend back before the coming of Catholicism."
The brilliantly painted masks are one example of the fusion of pre- and post-Hispanic cultures. Conquering Spanish friars, observing the enthusiasm for masked dance spectacles, promoted Catholicism by devising their own dramas. There are still dances performed today that re-enact the Conquest and, more surprisingly, the conflict between Moors and Christians in Spain.
If any one image dominates it is that of the skeleton, the personification of death. It's usually a playful, comical figure rather than a sinister one. There are myriad skeleton costumes, and skulls and skeletons of all sizes are fashioned from every conceivable material, from sugar to, logically enough, bone. Wood, tin and packaging are recycled in pieces that often feature ingenious animated jaws and limbs.
A magnificent sculpture of a skeleton intertwined with plants and animals, made by Felipe Linares, spells out the cyclical nature of life and death. "The skeleton," Chloe points out, "is a way of saying that we are all skeletons in the end, that death is a great leveller."
Tiburcio will be making a ceramic Tree of Life in the Gallery. These are complex, painted sculptures featuring numerous tiny figures spanning the range of human experience, in this life and the next. They evolved from simple beginnings as representations of Adam and Eve with the Tree of Knowledge. While he is here, Tiburcio's 19-year-old son is running his workshop in Metepec, close to Mexico City.
Skills are traditionally handed on in this way, from father to son. "Or," Chloe says, "mother to daughter. The division of labour between the sexes changes from place to place. In some towns it is exclusively women who work with ceramic."
Her initial visit to Mexico, some 20 years ago, has developed into a lifelong passion. She studied French and English at Trinity College, and then, unsure what to do, headed off to visit a friend there. "I loved it, and I particularly loved the people very much, their enthusiasm, their spontaneity and their generosity. It is an intensely creative country, but you could say that it's not a place for purists. I know some visitors find it overwhelming, but for me the vitality and exuberance are very winning."
Since then she has assembled ethnographic collections, organised exhibitions and written books on Mexican dress, ornament and design. Her commitment and enthusiasm remain undimmed.
"Ultimately I think it is important to document local traditions, because they are not immortal, they die out. In 20 years, everything might have changed."
Behind the Mask: Mexican Devotions can be seen at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College Dublin, until December 5th. Chloe Sayer will give lectures in the gallery at 1.15 p.m. on October 27th, October 28th and November 3rd. Admission is free.