Carlos Betancourt
About the Ephemeral and Memory 20, 2013
Pigmented inkjet on paper
64 x 44 inches
Edition of 10
For more than three decades, Carlos Betancourt has built a body of work that explores memory as both material and experience. His multidisciplinary practice—spanning photography, painting, sculpture, installation, and mixed media—treats images, objects, symbols, and fragments as vessels of remembrance. Across time, places, and mediums, Betancourt constructs visual systems that examine how memory expands, transforms, and persists.
Throughout his career, Betancourt has moved fluidly between mediums while maintaining a remarkably consistent conceptual core. His work investigates the continuity of memory, the passage of time, the expansion of personal and collective histories, and the enduring power of beauty. Drawing from Caribbean roots, Miami’s cultural landscape, and Afro-Caribbean traditions and rituals, his practice embraces syncretism—the blending of cultures, histories, and spiritual systems. As the artist often reflects, “the ancestral allows us to become new,” expressing his conviction that inherited knowledge and symbolic language continually renew the present—suggesting that when we remain connected to the source, we are constantly reborn.
Carlos Betancourt’s work is held in numerous public and private collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the New Orleans Museum of Art; the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery; and The Bass Museum of Art, among others. His monograph Carlos Betancourt: Imperfect Utopia was published by Rizzoli/Skira, and his work has been exhibited internationally at art fairs such as Art Basel, Arco and Zona Maco. His projects and exhibitions have been featured in publications including The New York Times, Art in America, Gagosian Quarterly, The Wall Street Journal, Artforum, and ARTnews. He continues his philanthropic work through the Betancourt-Latorre Foundation.