Bob Bellerue is among the performers at Cryptic Providence, a summer-long art and performance project with a life and death theme at Providence’s North Burial Ground. Conceived by Provincetown artist Jay Critchley, it features 15 projects by visual artists and performers.

Wild Don Lewis

There’s life in the cemetery.

This weekend and next, 15 visual and performance artists will present Cryptic Providence in Providence’s North Burial Ground. The shows are free, open to the public and not your normal fare.

“It’s an existential investigation and exploration,” says Jay Critchley of Provincetown, an artist and the curator of the project.

There will be music, dance and visual art. And there will be many variations on a theme: death.

“We could explore death in unending ways of how we relate to death and life. I think that changes as society changes.”

Critchley came up with the concept for the event in 2000. He was an artist in residence at AS220 in Providence and explored underground sites in the city, an artistic study he called the Providence Dirt Project.

“The earth is about birth and rebirth. And it’s also about the environment and how we relate to the actual dirt under our feet.”

That project involved three sites: a train tunnel on the East Side that’s no longer accessible; the abandoned Masonic Temple, which has since been converted into a hotel; and the North Burial Ground.

So when Critchley decided to pick up his underground exploration where he left off, he had one viable choice: the North Burial Ground, which dates to about 1700. One of its notable features is a mausoleum built into the side of a hill.

“It really is an amazing space.”

In the mausoleum you’ll find a skylight, space for about 200 coffins and, this summer, as part of Cryptic Providence, one of five installation art projects. The work, created by Critchley, is called Final Passage and features an early 1960s Chevrolet Impala, wrapped in fabric, as though mummified.

“The whole idea of mummification is to prepare the body for an afterlife. The question is, what is the afterlife of the automobile? Or what is the future of transportation and energy? It’s open to interpretation.”

In a back room of the mausoleum you’ll find another piece of installation art, The Purity of the Vikings by Joseph Burwell.

“He creates vaguely identifiable objects from different cultures that look as though they were exhumed from the ground.”

You’ll need a flashlight to see The Purity of the Vikings. The room has no light source.

Other installation art projects include a message board where visitors may leave thoughts and prayers for the dead, and a short documentary about the North Burial Ground.

The cemetery is the site of performance art tomorrow and Saturday, as well as next Saturday, and at the end of the summer, Sept. 21 and 27.

Tomorrow there are performances from 5 to 10 p.m. Our Stones Last Beyond Our Years, a documentary about the North Burial Ground by Sandrine Silverman and Alfred Schoeninger, will be presented in the mausoleum from 5 to 7 p.m. That will be followed Blue Storm, a live music and dance performance by Wanda Gala and Bob Bellerue. At 8:15 p.m. there will be a Requiem Mass by Arvid Tomayko-Peters and Christie Lee Gibson. And at 9 p.m., Hannah Verlin presents a “fire-activated installation” called Nest Eggs.

On Saturday, there are performances from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., beginning with a GPS walking tour of the cemetery. At 1 p.m., Connie Crawford of Perishable Theatre in Providence presents an artistic interpretation of the lives of those buried in the cemetery. There’s an artists’ talk at 2:30 p.m. The Providence-based Jump! Dance Company of Paula Hunter performs at 4 p.m. And at 5:30 p.m., Blue Storm is performed again.

The North Burial Ground is at 4 Branch Ave., at the intersection of North Main Street, Providence.

brourke@projo.com