Betsabeé Romero Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Betsabeé Romero
Betsabeé Romero, 2016
Born	1963 (age 61–62) Mexico City, Mexico
Alma mater	Universidad Iberoamericana
Known for	Visual artist, sculptor

Betsabeé Romero (born in 1963) is a talented visual artist from Mexico. She creates amazing art like sculptures, installations (art you can walk through!), prints, photos, and videos. Her art has been shown in over 40 solo exhibitions all around the world, in places like the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Betsabeé calls herself a "mechanic artist." She uses everyday things like old tires, car parts, and even chewing gum. These materials help her talk about history and how we use things in cities today. She mixes these with traditional Mexican symbols and ideas. This helps her explore history, culture, and the challenges of modern life.

Her art often explores important social topics. These include people moving to new places, roles for boys and girls, old traditions, and different cultures mixing. While her art is deeply rooted in Mexican history, it also connects to today's world and global issues.

About Betsabeé Romero
- Early Life and Learning
Her Artworks
Awards and Honors
Images for kids
See also

About Betsabeé Romero

Early Life and Learning

Betsabeé Romero was born in Mexico City in 1963. She studied at the Universidad Iberoamericana from 1980 to 1984. She also earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Academia de San Carlos in 1986.

She continued her studies in Paris, France, at famous places like the Louvre and the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts. After returning to Mexico, she studied ancient Mexican art and art from the colonial period. She earned a second master's degree in Art History from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in 1994.

Betsabeé believes that culture is everywhere. She once said, "Culture exists where people write, sing, cook or dance." She also believes culture can cross borders and walls.

Her Artworks

Materials She Uses

Tribute to Wirikuta, 2011, Montreal, Canada

Memoria de Hojalata, Parque España, Mexico City

Betsabeé loves to use materials that have been used before and then thrown away. Some of her favorite materials are old car tires and other car parts. She transforms these everyday items through sculpture and painting. She creates "refashioned cars, carved tires, painted hoods, and incised mirrors."

She adds images and symbols inspired by Mexican history and culture to these materials. These symbols can be from ancient times or from today. Tires and cars also represent movement and people traveling to new places.

Many of Betsabeé's artworks combine sculpture and printmaking. She carves patterns and symbols onto large, discarded tires. She treats the rubber as if it were wood. Sometimes, she uses these carved wheels like giant rollers to make prints on fabric or clay.

The materials themselves have a special meaning. Natural rubber comes from a tree found in Brazil and other parts of South America and Asia. The history of rubber is very complex and has affected people worldwide. Betsabeé has also used chewing gum in her art, like in her sculpture De Tuti fruti. Gum comes from a tree in southern Mexico and Central America. Its history goes back to the ancient Mayans and Aztecs.

Her works make us think about how modern factories use natural things like clay, rubber, and gum for mass production.

Exhibitions Around the World

Betsabeé Romero has shown her art in more than 20 biennials (large art shows held every two years). These include shows in Cuba, Brazil, Cairo, and Vancouver, Canada. She has also had over 40 solo exhibitions in Mexico and other countries.

Some of her first solo shows were in Mexico City and Paris, France, in 1999. A big show called Betsabeé Romero: Lagrimas Negras (Black Tears) featured 103 of her artworks. It was shown in Puebla, Mexico, from 2007 to 2008. Parts of this exhibition also traveled to other museums.

El Vuelo y Su Semilla (The Flight and Its Seed) explored ideas about migration, colonization, food, and culture. This show was seen in Washington, D.C., and San Antonio, Texas, in 2017. Each room in the exhibition showed a different type of art, sometimes with Betsabeé's poems.

In 2018, Betsabeé was featured in a special sculpture project in Washington, D.C. She created four sculptures from carved and painted tires. These artworks talked about "themes of migration and movement." The group of sculptures was called Signals of a Long Road Together. They were shown for two years on New York Avenue.

The sculptures were tall stacks of tires, painted with metallic colors. They even had lights inside to make them glow. One sculpture, Huellas y cicatricez (Traces and scars), was 16 feet tall. It showed figures of running mothers and children carved into the tires. Another, Movilidad y tensión (Mobility and tension), had eight half-tires with designs inspired by ancient Spain.

Betsabeé's art is also part of permanent collections in museums around the world. These include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Phoenix Art Museum.

Day of the Dead Artworks

Betsabeé Romero has created several art installations for the Day of the Dead. This holiday is celebrated in Mexico and Central America on November 1 and 2. It is a time to remember people who have passed away. Its traditions are very old, going back 3000 years.

In 2015, Betsabeé created an installation for the Day of the Dead at the British Museum in London. In the Great Court, she made an altar dedicated to the Unknown Immigrant. She used traditional paper and metal art. She made hot air balloons shaped like skulls and tin skeletons to float above the court. Paper banners and marigold serpents were also part of the display.

One of the 103 trajineras in Canto de Agua, Mexico City

Betsabeé's installation Canto de Agua (Song of water) was shown in the Zócalo (main square) of Mexico City in 2016. It combined the traditions of the Day of the Dead ofrenda (offering) with social issues. She decorated 103 trajineras (traditional flat-bottomed boats) as offerings. These boats honored people who had died that year and connected their deaths to problems in Mexico City. Mexican artisans created the trajineras, keeping alive ancient traditions.

Los huesos tienen memoria (Bones have a memory) was an exhibition at the Museo Dolores Olmedo from 2016 to 2017. It was dedicated to the many missing persons in Mexico. Betsabeé used modern elements and traditional sugar skulls to create lights. She sees these lights as representing the light of living traditions. Fabric banners looked like ancient Mexican books. Arrays of sugar skulls reminded people of ancient skull racks.

Awards and Honors

Betsabeé Romero has received many awards and honors for her amazing art. Some of them include:

1994: Grand Prize at the II FEMSA Biennial in Mexico for Refugio para un lecho de rosas (Shelter for a bed of roses).
2006: First prize at the Cairo Biennial for Cuerpos vestidos (Dressed Bodies).