Category: Mexico

Art Could be a Sustainable Luxury (but it Has a Long Way to Go)

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Art Could be Sustainable Luxury, but it Has a Long Way to Go.
Artist Betsabeé Romero honored at LuxuryLab 2022
Exhibition at Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico on view until end of August
(text edited by Delphine Schrank)

As I walked through Cuando el tiempo se rompió (When Time Broke), the latest exhibition by Mexican artist Betsabeé Romero at the Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico, I was struck by the juxtaposition of her most recent works. It suddenly made sense. It was all coming together. The artistic interpretation of movement, migrants, and mirrors. The artist was there, it was a Monday in June, and the museum was closed to the public.

I have marveled at Betsabeé’s work so often in the past. The first time was eight years ago, wandering the streets of the Condesa district. Betsabeé had transformed a car into a playful permanent installation, a human-size toy, really, and planted it on the doorsteps of the hotel Condesa DF. To the left of the white and burgundy car, passersby will find a large silver key. Turn it, and the car will suddenly play a rendering of Agustin Lara‘s Veracruz song.

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At Your Home Without Me: The Artistic Mankind of Betsabeé Romero

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At Your Home Without Me: The Artistic Mankind of Betsabeé Romero

“Art needs to express itself to safeguard humanity.” These are the words of Betsabeé Romero, a Mexican fixture, sculptor, and a generous, greedy painter who is exhibited around the world. She is a poet and activist too. This humanity—a damaged, confused and self-reflecting humanity—was not prepared to face the brutal consequences of the Covid19 pandemic.

Betsabeé Romero is now listening to the suddenly silent streets of Mexico City, North America’s largest city.

From her little street house in the Villa de Cortés district, the artist is on the lookout for the sadness that invades the world faster than the disease. The absence of funerals. the hidden violence against the women and children in her country. And of course, her own personal fight fight for female artists. 

Confined, she writes, draws, and reads, mostly philosophy at the moment. She is thinking about art installations to illustrate the staggered mourning that many people will experience. Incidentally, she has been invited to create and speak on this topic at the Frieze in London this Fall, as well as in Sydney and Rome.

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At Your Home Without Me with Vanessa Serrano: Confined Bodies, but Free Souls

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At Your Home Without Me with Vanessa Serrano
Confined Bodies, but Free Souls. At Last

‘When I bared my soul it seems you did not hear‘
Joe Jackson | Body and Soul

Singer and songwriter Erykah Badu recently posted on Instagram a drawing of a person seated in a lotus position. “If you can’t go outside,” the caption read, “go inside.”

“A sound advice,” wrote Diane Von Furstenberg who shared the post @therealdvf.

‘If you can’t go outside, go inside’ is exactly what Mexican author and entrepreneur Vanessa Serrano—who has developed her professional work as a path to search for her own purpose—invites people to focus on.

“I believe we should take today’s opportunity to observe our minds,” Vanessa told me in a phone interview.

To ease people’s confinement, Serrano has created a series of free online sessions in Spanish  called Healing Detox and Spiritual Awakening. 

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A Hug to Humanity

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A Hug to Humanity


Fire-chat with Saskia Niño de Rivera, founder of Reinserta in Mexico

Saskia Niño de Rivera was the first of the Vital Voices Gala evening’s honorees to walk back on stage at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center Opera on April  24th, 2019.

The Mexican activist went straight to Hillary Clinton, and without hesitation, hugged the former Secretary of State and co-founder of Vital Voices, a global foundation launched in 1997 to support women who advance economic opportunity, increase political and public engagement, end gender-based violence and promote human rights across 180 countries and territories.

A few moments before, the audience saw a video of children playing in Lucha Libre disguises (the famous masked Mexican wrestlers). One them, drawing, is heard wishing: “I want to go to the zoo; when I am big, I want to be a fireman; and when I am really big–yeah–if I am really big, I will be The Hulk.” 

A childhood fantasy, indeed, except this child cannot even go to a zoo. This child is one the 700 children born and raised in a Mexican jail.

 

Saskia Nino de Rivera and Hillary Clinton | (c) Lancer Photography | 2019
Saskia Niño de Rivera and Hillary Clinton | (c) Lancer Photography | 2019

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A Requiem for a Car

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A Requiem for a Car
Fire chat with Mexican artist Betsabeé Romero, special guest of Art Paris 2019

A group of bicycles is carrying on their “shoulders a dead body made-of-steel,” moving a car through the large avenues and narrow streets of Paris to its final resting place right in front of Le Grand Palais, next to the Champs Elysées. “A Requiem for a Car,” a Jaguar to be exact, is a symbol of speed, power and wealth. This invitation to slow down a humanity obsessed with haste, consumerism, and individualism is Mexican artist Betsabeé Romero art installation to celebrate the 2019 edition of Art Paris. Romero, whose art has been exhibited throughout the world and is now part of the permanent collections in North and South American as well as European museums, plays here with some of her favorite themes: automobiles and globalization. 

A spanish version of this interview with Bétsabée Romero was published online by First Class Life

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