Memory and faith collide in “Descansa en el Poder” at Denver gallery

Denver has accumulated several interesting project spaces in recent years, and they have all served to liven up the visual arts scene. These places — where artists and curators work together to develop new ideas — are often tucked away in side rooms of galleries and museums, so you have to know where to look if you want to see what they are exhibiting.

One my favorites: Understudy, the gallery run by the Denver Theatre District that sits on the first floor of the Colorado Convention Center. The storefront space shows a revolving lineup of projects by local up-and-comers, mostly large-scale installations that visitors can climb on or wander through interactively.

Another: the backroom at David B. Smith Gallery in LoDo. The space is small and often displays new work by established artists from the gallery’s international roster. It provides them with a place to experiment in a less-commercial way and gives the public a glimpse into their artistic process.

The most active project space is housed in the side gallery at the RedLine Arts Center in RiNo. RedLine is a large facility, a former machine shop converted into neat artist studios and galleries, but the project space — walled off from the rest of the building — is less programmed and more open-ended. It’s big enough for complicated installations and separated enough that visitors feel like they are in a whole different place.

This space currently hosts an installation by artist Denise Zubizarreta, who uses it to great effect. The show, titled “Descansa en el Poder” (“Rest In Power”), is a multimedia environment that invites visitors to sit and contemplate how personal, historical narratives overlap with communal religious practices to create our individual understanding of the world and the way we formulate and hold memories.

In a sense, it explores how our own family stories, going back generations, are impacted and filtered through our metaphysical beliefs — whatever they may be.

Zubizarreta, in her artist’s statement, sums it up as “a spiritual passage where the viewer can connect intimately with the past, feeling the heartbeat of ancestral tales pulsating in the present.”

The work is set up like a series of altars installed along the walls of the gallery. Visitors stop and reflect on each one as they pass through the exhibit. For me, the experience unfolded like a religious procession, perhaps similar to the Catholic ritual known as Stations of the Cross.

Zubizarreta’s altars do include Catholic imagery, and lots of it. There are statues of saints, rosaries, votive candles and crucifixes. Those things will be touchstones for people familiar with Christian iconography.

But there are also elements of other faiths, including spiritually-tinged references to nature, food, science, human labor and Indigenous belief systems. The artist notes that her piece is heavily influenced by the Caribbean roots of her family. She is of both Puerto Rican and Cuban descent.

Frankly, it is hard to sort out where one practice starts and another begins, and that is really the magic of the show. Different belief systems collide into one singular idea of spirituality that crosses cultural and geographical boundaries. The point seems to be that all faiths hold great power and they guide the way we remember the people who came before us.

In some ways, Zubizarreta lets us feel comfort in those memories. There are moments of celebration and serenity in the show. But, in other ways, she leaves us with darkness. What are we to make of an altar made up of a dozen transparent, plastic crucifixes suspended — upside down — from the ceiling? There are many instances like that in the show, which might transport viewers to the edge of frightfulness or trauma.

Zubizarreta does work to bring the idea of memory home to anyone who visits. One wall of the gallery features a collage of family photos, maybe two dozen in all, each set in a gold frame. The pictures are both vintage and recent. The images are sometimes clear and other times abstracted. In the middle, she has positioned a video monitor that projects other, candid pictures of people past.

Is it her own family? Some fictional family? In a sense, it is everyone’s family; we all have these photos of our relatives now deceased. Our recollections of them come and go; they evolve, disappear, take on different demeanors. It does all feel familiar.

Zubizarreta, working with curator Tya Anthony, does not give us any formula for making or controlling memory, but the collaborators do provide the tools for us to do it ourselves. Within these altars is some touchstone for visitors of every faith, a place to start when evaluating retrospection.

And, importantly, there is room to process. In the middle of the installation are two rows of upholstered pews that seem to have been salvaged from a church. They are a universally-recognized cue to stop and sit and think about things on a level that transcends the physical. We all know what to do in a pew, no matter what divine faith we hold.