Rivals of Memory: A Celebration in Shadow and Song

This reimagining of Diego Rivera’s  The Rivals is titled  Rivals of Memory: A Celebration in Shadow and Song . It fuses the vibrant ritualism of Rivera’s homage to Mexican festivity with a layered, spectral dreamscape that blurs life and afterlife, rivalry and reverence, presence and reflection. In the original mural, Rivera celebrated the cultural pride and dance of Oaxaca’s Guelaguetza, presenting a harmonious yet competitive visual rhythm between two male figures locked in ceremonial rivalry. This version retains that spirit but transposes it through a ghostly veil of Día de los Muertos iconography, folkloric echoes, and childlike nostalgia. 

The central figure from the original—one of the rivals—stands confidently at the left of this reinterpretation. He is no longer merely a participant in a rural festivity; he becomes a witness to a multidimensional unfolding of tradition. His pose is still, his expression softly triumphant. Yet behind him, memory stirs. The sombreroed calaveras—the skeletal dancers of Mexico’s death culture—appear above him like a second chorus, their wide grins frozen in celebratory mockery. These are not mocking him, however. They are preserving him. Laughing not at death, but with it. 

At the center and lower foreground, Rivera’s clustered forms from  The Rivals remain—the bent figures, the stacked geometries of villagers, and the abstracted architecture. However, they are blended into translucent textures and overlaid by the face of a young child in calavera makeup, holding a heart-shaped bouquet. This child becomes the bridge. He is the future who inherits both the cultural pride and the spectral solemnity. His eyes meet the viewer’s as if to ask—do you remember what this celebration truly means? 

In the upper right, the calaveras wear flamboyant hats and traditional dresses, a nod to the exuberance of La Catrina. Their position near vibrant marigolds reinforces their role as spiritual messengers. Above them, ghostly church domes shimmer in a hue close to ivory—the architecture of memory. They appear faint, like distant hymns. 

Color was the compass through which this dreamlike duality was charted. The dominant tones are warm but worn: sepia whites, creamy beige, and faded ochres ground the living world in nostalgia. These hues suggest old photographs and sun-soaked stucco walls, evoking time and permanence. The palette bends toward softness, avoiding high contrast to maintain a sense of mist and emotional proximity. This is a place not of sharp boundaries, but of blending stories. 

The hues of the calaveras and the flowers drift toward brilliant orange, deep crimson, and dusty rose. The marigolds glisten like flames—they are not mere floral décor but beacons, guiding spirits home. Their orange carries dual meaning: it is the fire of celebration and the warmth of remembrance. It is Rivera’s brushstroke turned luminous, radiant yet reverent. 

The child’s white shirt and skeletal face evoke purity and passage. His white is not sterile—it is spiritual. It stands in contrast to the deeper red around his collar and the burnt sienna shadows cast by the sun. His face, painted in skeletal form, merges life and death into a single innocence. The surrounding villagers appear almost cubist, shaded in muted greens, terracotta, and sand, allowing the central spiritual elements to rise from their base. 

The skies shift in tone between an almost imperceptible turquoise and faded parchment yellow, capturing the essence of both day and dusk. The birds—symbols of soul flight—arc across the background like brushstrokes of direction, pointing toward memory, migration, and continuation. 

When I created  Rivals of Memory , I wanted to celebrate more than just festive competition. I wanted to reveal how, in Rivera’s world and my own, rivalry is less about conquest and more about belonging—about who dances the hardest, sings the truest, or remembers with the most fire. The rivals in this version aren’t only men—they are generations, beliefs, the living and the dead. The contest has become communion. 

Diego Rivera painted with mass, with dignity, with revolutionary pride. I wanted to take that grounding and lift it upward, into the ephemeral, the folkloric. The result is neither purely Mexican nor purely dream. It is a fusion of mural and myth, of street and spirit. It belongs to everyone who’s ever felt both pride and loss at once.