The Endless Spiral:
Betsabeé Romero

April 20 - September 1, 2024

A Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia

Among the official collateral events of the 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, is the comprehensive exhibition and research project of the Mexican artist Betsabeé Romero, entitled The Endless Spiral, organized by the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) from Long Beach. CA and curated by Argentine Gabriela Urtiaga, art historian and researcher, Chief Curator at MOLAA. This exhibition explores Betsabeé Romero’s artistic practices through commissioned artworks and new installations and is the result of the long-term relationship between the artist and the MOLAA Museum. Her work is part of the MOLAA Permanent Collection and, at the end of the exhibition as a Collateral Event of the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, MOLAA will present this show in 2025, in Long Beach, California USA.

The curatorial axes and concepts are expanded in different galleries of the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, under the premise of exploring the theme "Foreigners Everywhere," title of the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.

We will present the show in different sections scattered in each of the galleries, creating a diverse presentation of this crucial topic, opening ideas and concepts that are immersed in her body of work and making visible the dualities, tensions, conflicts and fractures in our culture and history.

The artist developed a strong starting narrative that puts the focus on the experience of being a foreigner in the world and from the perspective of many who lack territory to seek refuge and survive. She speaks of those who seek and run, constantly bumping against the always foreign and exclusionary political and economic borders; from the mirror that does not recognize us, that doubts, watches, ignores, and distorts. From mirrors that do not include identities and genders beyond obsolete classifications and discriminations. From the home where violence prevails, wielded by those who have taken the baton, like a dagger that arbitrarily marks the borders that define their power as petty patriarchs, exercising it at the expense of the lives of women and children who inhabit it at their greatest vulnerability. From the wisest and most consistent communities that have had to hide to defend their sacred sites and save the world from the barbarism to which the logic of greed and excessive consumption has led us.

The exhibition is divided in six (6) sections. The experience will begin through the installation Families Divided by Sharp Borders, where the visitor will question the concept and experiences of migration that happens before, during, and after our times. The visitor will comprehend how, in community, we can contribute to dismantle the horror and injustices. Through Breaking the Perverse Frontiers of the Mirror, security mirrors will cover the room that seek us out and distort us. These are mapped and rigged mirrors with harsh, bordering lines, broken mirrors in a universe of the broken. Fractured Footprints explores the suffering caused by the Borders. They are imposed lines that oppose necessity, survival, and understanding. Scars that bleed the world are lines that pursue us throughout life, lines inscribed on the body and engraved on the feet and in the footprints we leave. They are cruel lines with sick and deadly edges. Memories of a Moving Totem introduces the viewer to the mobility and wheel-based urban totem, hand-engraved wheels that were once instruments of memory, cylindrical stamps that imprinted history on all cultures of humanity. Western wheels changed the course of the ride, prioritizing speed and forgetfulness to continue running over. These recycled tires reclaim the opposite direction to modernity; instead of serving on highways and for the vehicles of power, they moved backward, recycled slowly, manually propelled to remember and make visible what speed had left behind, so as not to see it anymore. A Rolling Totem of indigenous iconography from across the Americas, memories of embroideries and ceramics, steles, and stone objects from different regions and cultures. The Shadow of the House Was Also Broken reflects on Culture as the home we carry within that survived the shadow of all powers. In the Home, borders are also reproduced, polarizations have divided even the bed in the familiar landscape. Finally, Dreaming of a Sunrise with Feathers in The Endless Spiral, journeys through an endless spiral, wisdom sowing and germinating in cycles, a rotating compendium of collective and endearing flights. A snail with circular and labyrinthine wings, a horizontal and infinite crest, architectural and ritual attire, a space where all can enter and inhabit.

This exhibition is organized with Main Partners: William S. & Michelle Ciccarelli Lerach and Santiago García Galván.

Betsabeé Romero is an artist who has had the opportunity to live and produce her work in different countries, cultures, and contexts. In the curatorial statement, Gabriela Urtiaga writes: “Betsabeé is a nomadic spirit always looking for new experiences and perspectives with a focus on examining different essential and urgent topics for international audiences. She works with a strong consciousness of issues such as migration, gender roles, cultural traditions, religiosity, miscegenation, and individual and collective memory. Her method of transgressing the limits of different established categories and making visible the injustice around the world as a point of examination and a call for action is redefined as a community commitment through a dialogue between art, social justice, and heritage interacting for the common good. The artist developed a strong starting narrative that focuses on the experience of being a foreigner in the world and from the perspective of many who lack territory to seek refuge and survive.”

Biography

Betsabeé Romero (México, 1963)

Lives and works in Mexico City. For more than 20 years, her work has specialized in the elaboration of a critical discourse about issues such as migration, miscegenation, and mobility, through the re-imagination of symbols and daily rituals of the global consumer culture, such as cars, tattoos, and urban signage. In the same way, she has been interested in addressing the problems of public art and popular art, its permanence and relationship with the social fabric and with alternative audiences to contemporary art.

She has had more than 100 individual exhibitions on 5 continents, including those of the British Museum, Grand Palais, York Avenue in Washington, the Mexico Pavilion at Expo Dubai 2020, Place Du Louvre, the Vieille Bourse in Lille, the Gran Ofrenda del Zocalo in Mexico City, Nevada Museum of Art, Neuberger Museum, Nelson & Atkins Museum of art, Anahuacalli Museum, Dolores Olmedo Museum, Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Amparo Museum in Puebla, MARCO and Monterrey Museum, Canberra University Museum, Museo Carrillo Gil, Recoleta in Buenos Aires, and several more.

She has participated in numerous residencies and international exhibitions such as the Havana Biennial, the Portoalegre Biennial, Art Grandeur Nature at the Courneuve, France, Le Clezio at the Louvre Museum, ECO Exhibition at the Reyna Sofía Museum, InSite 97 in San Diego - Tijuana, Bienal del Cairo, Kohj in Bangalore India, among others. Her work is part of important collections such as the British Museum Collection, the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, California, Museum and Contemporary Art in Houston, Phoenix, Montreal, Daros Collection in Switzerland, Nelson & Atkins, Nevada Museum of Art Collection, World Bank in Washington, Gelman in Mexico, MOCA in Los Angeles, Museum of Monterrey, Museum of Contemporary Art of Portoalegre Brazil and others.