Betsabeé Romero

Betsabeé Romero (born 1963) is a Mexican visual artist. Her works include sculptures, installations, printmaking, perforated paper, photographs, and videos. gender roles, She grounds her work in the traditions and history of Mexico, but interpretations of her work connect it to contemporary and global contexts. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Academia de San Carlos

Works Materials

She intentionally chooses materials that have been used and discarded.

The materials themselves have significance in a global context, evoking a history of colonialist exploitation Natural rubber comes from the milky sap of Hevea brasiliensis, a tree that is indigenous to Brazil Romero has also used chewing gum as a material, in works such as her suspended tire sculpture, De Tuti fruti.

quote|Through clever inversions of meaning and material, Romero's works question the way in which modern industry appropriates and transforms natural elements such as clay, rubber, and gum for mass production. Cairo, She has held more than 40 individual exhibitions in Mexico and other countries worldwide.

A ten-year retrospective including 103 pieces of her work, Betsabeé Romero: Lagrimas Negras (Black Tears) was curated by Julián Zugazagoitia and shown at the Museo Amparo in Puebla, Mexico (2007–2008). Versions of this exhibition have also appeared at Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso (2010), and the Neuberger Museum of Art (2011).

El Vuelo y Su Semilla (The Flight and Its Seed) examined interplaying themes of migration, colonization, food and traditional culture. Each of five rooms featured a different type of work, some accompanied by Romero's poems. Trenzando raíces (Braided roots) at the Art Gallery of York University, Toronto, Ontario (2018) was developed in collaboration with indigenous women from New Credit First Nation. They requested that one of the six pieces created remain at a ceremonial center in Mississauga.

In 2018, Romero was featured as the fourth artist in the National Museum of Women in the Arts-organized New York Avenue Sculpture Project. Four sculptures of carved, painted tires were the first works to be specifically commissioned for the project. They address "themes of migration and movement". Used car tires are carved, painted with metallic paint, and assembled into "totemic structures" that use interior lighting to increase visibility. Huellas y cicatricez (Traces and scars) is a 16-foot stack of four tires, carved with figures of running mothers and children, hand in hand. Movilidad y tensión (Mobility and tension) stacks eight-halves of tires, engraved with a blend of Islamic and European designs reminiscent of Mudéjar symbols from ancient Spain. In En cautiverio (In captivity) slender steel columns hold up two tractor tires, whose surfaces are painted with intertwining serpents. Movilidad en suspenso (Mobility in suspense) is an assembly of four tractor tires whose treads are decorated with traditional Mexican patterns. the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri,

Day of the Dead installations Betsabeé Romero has created a number of installations focused around the Day of the Dead. The Day of the Dead is a holiday that takes place in Mexico and Central America on November 1 and 2 as a commemoration of the deceased. Its origins go back 3000 years, and reflect a fusion of pre-Hispanic culture and Catholic religion.

In 2015 Romero created an installation for the Day of the Dead at the British Museum. In the Great Court, she created an altar dedicated to the Unknown Immigrant. She drew upon folk traditions of paper and metal art, creating cantolla hot air balloons shaped like skulls out of tissue paper and tin calacas skeletons to float above the Great Court. Hanging paper banners printed on papel picado the trajinera, a traditional type of flat-bottomed boat; and reflect traditions of pre-Hispanic times in which trajineras circulated in Tenochtitlán.

Los huesos tienen memoria (Bones have a memory) at the Museo Dolores Olmedo (2016–2017) was dedicated to the almost 28 thousand missing persons registered by the Mexican federal government. Romero incorporated modern elements inspired by the lamps Dolores Olmedo made of Bohemian glass for her home.

Awards and honors

Betsabeé Romero has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the following: 1988, Oric'Art, Neuilly sur Seine, France 1994, Jóvenes Creadores de Conaculta (scholarship for young creators), CONACULTA 1994, Grand Prize, Acquisition Award in the II FEMSA Biennial, Mexico, for Refugio para un lecho de rosas (Shelter for a bed of roses) 2006, first prize, Cairo Biennial, for Cuerpos vestidos (Dressed Bodies)