Betsabeé Romero unveils An Altar in Their Memory / Un Altar en Su Memoria

Timed with Día de Muertos/Day of the Dead (October 31–November 2 in the US), internationally acclaimed Mexican artist Betsabeé Romero will unveil her site-specific installation An Altar in Their Memory / Un Altar en Su Memoria at Latino Arts Project on Tuesday, October 29. On view through November 17, the artist’s installation elements were delayed at the border by customs. Therefore, the exhibition will open nine days after the originally planned exhibition date. Perhaps fittingly, one aspect of the installation tackles immigration and migrants crossing the border.

This is the second exhibition at the non-profit art space located in the Dallas Design District on Dragon Street. Latino Arts Project is a non-profit organization, and the first-of-its-kind,  pop-up museum founded by Jorge Baldor with Executive Director, Carlos Gonzalez-Jaime.

Familiar with the artist’s installations from all over the world Gonzalez-Jaime expressed a desire to mount an exhibition of Romero’s work in Dallas. “We have been working on the exhibition for over a year but we didn’t have the space.” Baldor agreed this was an important artist to bring to Dallas at first considering his Bishop Arts gallery and shop Mercado369. “There just wasn’t enough room for an installation of this size,” Baldor said, adding, “We’re really honored that she’s here now.”

For more than twenty years, Betsabeé Romero’s work has been involved in the research and production of contemporary ofrendas. The artist’s installations typically combine folk traditions of metal and paper art with contemporary social concerns (including immigration, gun violence and other social conditions within Mexico and the world).

Día de Muertos ofrendas (altars), are one of the most important collective and cultural celebrations still in practice in Mexico, and Betsabeé Romero (Mexico City, 1963) is one of the most important contemporary artists in Mexico working with the traditional elements and rituals of Day of the Dead altars while interpreting these traditions within a contemporary perspective.”

“Day of the Dead is a celebration that has become very global, but with death, you are working with a concept that is very terrifying,” Romero shares. At Latino Arts Project the installation combines contemporary art and contemporary concepts and still uses very traditional elements. “The altar becomes an experience. It’s something that you can walk inside and participate with. Día de Muertos is a domestic and collective celebration at home and in the cemeteries that combines mourning in a social way. An altar is done as an offering. In this case, this installation is dedicated to all people who have passed away due to gun violence and to migrants who have passed because they were trying to get a better life crossing the border,” Romero shares.

While exhibitions tackling gun violence and immigration are sensitive subjects for museums, Baldor says “Carlos and I came up with the idea of Latino Arts Project so we could be nimble enough to curate an independent popup that displays expressive art that may be socially relevant but not as commercially acceptable,” offers Baldor. “We wanted to acknowledge the gun violence in North Texas that has been in the news every day,” Baldor says.

Romero’s work has been displayed on five continents, with more than 100 individual exhibitions. Previous exhibitions have been held at the British Museum in London; the Mega Altar at the Mexico City’s Zocalo; le Grand Palais in Paris; the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC; the Rubin Center in El Paso, TX; the Nevada Museum of Art; the Neuberger Museum in Harrison, NY; the Nelson & Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO; the Anahuacalli Museum in Mexico City; the Recoleta Esplanade in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Museo Casa Azul Frida Kahlo, among others.