Carlos Betancourt (born 1966 in San Juan, Puerto Rico) is an American artist widely recognized for his multidisciplinary approach. His work navigates themes of memory and personal experience, while also engaging with nature, the environment, beauty, identity, and communication. Through a process of re-examination, Betancourt recycles and reinterprets the past, presenting it in a vibrant, contemporary context. Deeply influenced by his own memories, he maintains that art is shaped by personal experience—not the other way around.
Betancourt’s art is distinguished by lush, layered compositions that fuse photography, collage, painting, and installation. These works often reflect his personal history and the complex cultural fabric of both the Caribbean the Americas. He returns frequently to his own memories, using them as a lens to reinterpret the past, allowing fragments of experience to take on new meaning in the present.
Nature plays a central role in his practice, inspired particularly by the lush landscapes of Puerto Rico and Florida, and other environments found in Greece and Mexico. His installations frequently highlight environmental concerns, emphasizing the urgent need to preserve natural habitats and wildlife.
Equally integral to his work is the exploration of cultural hybridity. Betancourt draws from a rich blend of multi-racial, multilingual, and transcultural influences, reflecting the diverse heritage of Caribbean and American societies. He incorporates symbols and objects linked to traditions, memories and rituals, reimagining them as contemporary artifacts that inspire awe and invite spiritual reflection.
Betancourt’s art has been deeply influenced by the works of other artists, particularly Ana Mendieta’s interventions, Robert Rauschenberg’s assemblages, Andy Warhol’s perceptual approach, Neo Rauch’s compositions, and a Federico Fellini-esque cast of characters featured in his photo assemblages. He also finds resonance with certain ideas from theorist Jean Baudrillard, especially regarding art and the philosophy of objects. Betancourt aligns with French artist Gustave Courbet’s assertion that “the only possible source for living art is the artist’s own experiences,” as well as with Martinican writer and theorist Édouard Glissant’s belief that “the past resides in material objects that only release their hidden meanings when encountered imaginatively and sensuously.” His artistic admiration spans a wide range of creators, including Fernando Oller, Cisco Jimenez, Bill Viola, Marilyn Minter, Cindy Sherman, Damien Hirst, Félix González-Torres, Jeff Koons, and Arnaldo Roche.
Through a deeply personal yet universally resonant practice, Carlos Betancourt creates a visual language that bridges past and present, memory and identity, the natural and the spiritual. His work stands as a testament to the power of art to transform experience into meaning, and to reimagine the world through the lens of cultural memory, beauty, and renewal.
Early years, early memories, Puerto Rico
Betancourt’s personal journey—physical, emotional, and intellectual—is the driving force behind his work. Born and raised in Puerto Rico to Cuban parents, he developed a deep love for nature and the rainforest, along with a passionate interest in the syncretic cultures and traditions of the Caribbean, including its Taíno cultural heritage. Like Caribbean culture itself, some of Betancourt’s work reflects a syncretic layering of information set against the vibrant intensity of the lush tropics.
While growing up in Puerto Rico, Betancourt was fascinated by his fathers and grandfather genealogical stories. Enrique Betancourt, the artist grandfather and a prominent journalist in Cuba until he exiled in 1963 to Puerto Rico, will show the young artist documents and photos of ancestors linking the family to historical figures such as Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, a Cuban independence leader and twice president of Cuba in the year…as well as saint Joseph Betancourt, a saint Guatemal, and ultimately to 15th century French explorer and king of the Canary Islands Jean de Bethencourt.
Betancourt will groe fascinated by this personal history, particualry Jean de Bethancourt and his wife Teguise, who was a queen of the guanchos indigenous people of Lanzarote, Canary Islands. Decades later, Betancourt will exhibit his work in Lanzarote, connecting the past ot the present.
One of his earliest memories, which later had a profound impact on his practice, was watching his mother and father reassemble their personal photo albums—albums that had been left behind in Cuba when they were forced into exile in Puerto Rico, as it was illegal to leave the country with them during the early years of Fidel Castro’s regime. Betancourt watched over the years as his parents painstakingly reconstructed these albums, filled with memories, from thousands of photographs mailed clandestinely from Cuba—sometimes one per letter. This early experience sparked the artist’s lifelong fascination with memory and the objects that hold it.
During this time, and after saving money for three years, he purchased his first camera—a Canon AE-1—through a mail-order catalog. He was twelve years old. He began photographing landscapes, his family and his friends, as well as documenting gatherings, using the images to create collages and later as references for oil and acrylic paintings. During this formative period, he also studied painting with Puerto Rican Cubist artist Jorge Rechany in his San Juan studio. He attended high school at Colegio La Piedad, also located in San Juan.
Tales of Ancestry
Also while growing up in Puerto Rico, Betancourt was enthralled by the genealogical tales shared by his father and, especially, by his grandfather, Enrique Betancourt—a celebrated Cuban journalist who went into exile to San Juan in 1963. Enrique would spread out brittle deeds, faded baptismal certificates, and sepia photographs, patiently guiding the young artist through a family tree that seemed to intersect with Caribbean and Atlantic history at every turn.
Among the most compelling figures he pointed out was Salvador Cisneros Betancourt (1828-1914), the Cuban independence leader who twice became president of the Republic-in-Arms during the Ten Years’ War (October 27 1873 – July 1875) and during the War of Independence (September 1895 – October 1897). Another branch led to Saint Peter of Saint Joseph de Betancur (1626-1667)—better known in Guatemala as Santo Hermano Pedro—the first canonised native of the Canary Islands and a pioneering missionary in Central America. Ultimately, Enrique traced the surname back to the medieval knight Jean de Béthencourt(1362-1425), who launched the 1402 conquest of Lanzarote and became “King of the Canary Islands” under the Crown of Castile.
Family lore embroidered that story with the romance of Béthencourt’s nephew Maciot de Béthencourt and the Guanche princess Teguise, whose name also survives in Lanzarote’s historic capital. Whether or not the bloodline is provable, the narrative fired Betancourt’s imagination; he became fascinated with the idea that his ancestors embodied meetings—and sometimes collisions—between Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
Decades later, the artist closed the circle when he created Interventions in Lanzarote: Tocando a Teguise (2002), a series of large-format chromogenic prints conceived and first shown on the island of Lanzarote. In these works he staged performative actions in volcanic landscapes, overlaying Guanche myths, family memory, and contemporary Caribbean iconography, thus knitting personal heritage to place.
This multigenerational narrative—spanning a revolutionary president, a Guatemalan saint, and a 15th-century explorer—continues to echo throughout Betancourt’s practice, fueling his lifelong preoccupation with memory, migration, and the objects that carry history forward.
Miami, Christo and Jeanne Claude, and the South Beach Underground
As a young teen, Betancourt moved to Miami with his parents on December 31, 1980. The clash and convergence of diverse cultures, architectural styles, and design immediately influenced him. He attended Miami Coral Park Senior High School, where he quickly became involved in art projects. Notably, he volunteered for artists Christo and Jeanne Claude’s world-renowned monumental installation Surrounded Islands (1983) in Biscayne Bay and Miami Beach.
During this time, Christo and Jeanne Claude stayed in an Art Deco hotel on the now-famous Ocean Drive in Miami Beach—a place rarely visited by tourists in the 1980s. Betancourt was drawn to Ocean Drive, intrigued by stories he had heard about the buildings there. Upon visiting, he was instantly moved by the area’s neglected Art Deco and Mid-Century Modern architecture. He saw inspiration and potential in the rich history of the city and its elderly community, blending with the few surfers and unique characters living among the many rundown buildings. Though the neighborhood was dangerous and dilapidated, it possessed an edge that Betancourt found inspiring and provocative. He envisioned the possibility of its transformation. After completing art school, he made it his mission to return to Miami Beach.
This brief but formative experience of visiting Miami Beach and volunteering on the Surrounded Islands project had a lasting impact on Betancourt. He would later open his studio, Imperfect Utopia, in Miami Beach, where he absorbed the spirit of the era and developed works reflecting it. Betancourt also began creating several large-scale, ephemeral art installations inspired by Surrounded Islands.
After high school, Betancourt studied architecture at Miami Dade Community College and graduated from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale in 1987, receiving Highest Achievement and Best Portfolio awards. Following graduation, he moved back to Miami Beach and became part of an influential group of early preservationists working with the Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL), which played a key role in shaping the renaissance of Miami Beach during the 1980s. Alongside friends and preservationists Barbara Capitman and Leonard Horowitz, he helped protect and preserve many Art Deco buildings in what would become the world’s largest and most famous Art Deco district. At times, his activism was hands-on—even tying himself to buildings like the Senator Hotel, a significant Art Deco landmark that was unfortunately demolished.
Betancourt’s interest in history also extended to raising awareness of mid-century architecture, particularly the work of Morris Lapidus, whom he admired and befriended during this period. Betancourt’s assistant at the time, Terry D’Amico, coined the term “MiMo” (Miami Modernist architecture). Working with the preservation league profoundly influenced Betancourt’s early artwork.
Imperfect Utopia
Shortly after completing art school and while actively engaged with the Miami Design Preservation League, Betancourt established his studio, Imperfect Utopia, in Miami Beach. Its inaugural space was a modest back room within the vintage shop Heydays on Washington Avenue, adjacent to The Strand—an influential gathering place for creative minds during Miami Beach’s underground art scene of the 1980s. This vibrant hub attracted luminaries such as David Hockney, Ed Ruscha, Keith Haring, and Paloma Picasso, providing Betancourt with an early immersion in a dynamic cultural milieu during Miamo Beach’s underground years.
With rent being cheap throughout the beach, Betancourt relocated Imperfect Utopia after winning a monetary prize in the Florida Furniture Competition for his futuristic furniture designs. He moved into the old architecture offices of Murray Dixon near Lenox and Lincoln Road. A friend had transformed the space into a temporary underground club called Avenue A, which quickly gained popularity with a distinct scene. Betancourt was a regular attendee. After a suspicious fire made the club less appealing, Betancourt took over the remaining lease and remained there for a couple of years before moving the studio to its final address on Lincoln Road.
Imperfect Utopia crystallized the bohemian, multicultural energy that powered Miami Beach’s artistic renaissance of the 1980s and ’90s. More than a studio, it operated as a laboratory for exchange and risk-taking, deliberately unsettling the city’s established art circuits and seeding new directions in practice. The space drew an extraordinary roster of visitors—painter-filmmaker Julian Schnabel, performer Sandra Bernhard, fashion visionary Gianni Versace, architect Morris Lapidus, Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, salsa icon Celia Cruz, ballet legend Rudolf Nureyev, photographer Bruce Weber, and jazz great Cab Calloway, whom Betancourt and the Miami Design Preservation League honored at a special event. Their presence affirmed Imperfect Utopia’s role as a true nexus of cross-disciplinary cross-pollination.
The complex interplay of personalities and the region’s vibrant trans-culturalism profoundly shaped Betancourt’s artistic approach during this period. His work evolved into richly layered compositions marked by collage, silkscreen, and mixed media techniques that articulated a syncretic visual language. Betancourt rigorously experimented with silkscreening both beneath and atop acrylic paint layers, pushing the boundaries of surface and texture. The studio’s storefront windows served as a continual site for avant-garde installations, reflecting an ongoing dialogue with the public and the urban environment.
A defining conceptual framework developed during this era was Betancourt’s Fracturism—a meditation on fragmentation as an inherent condition of human experience and knowledge in an era preceding the digital organization of information. He described Fracturism as “a longing to assemble all that we know, an archaic need to create memories and organize them... We had yet to carry our photo albums in our pockets, neatly arranged in our smartphones.” This philosophy materialized in complex, multi-layered works that juxtaposed contradictory imagery and texts, employing silkscreen, colored pencil, and paint to evoke the fractured nature of perception and memory.
Beyond its creative output, Imperfect Utopia played an instrumental role in Miami’s cultural resurgence, contributing to the establishment of a contemporary arts ecosystem in Miami and Miami Beach. Betancourt’s involvement with the South Florida Art Center, located within walking distance of his studio, and the Española Art Center a couple opf blocks away, further embedded him in a network of artists—such as Craig Coleman, Carlos Alves, and Kenny Scharf—who were pivotal in shaping the region’s artistic identity throughout the late 20th century.
Mainland Miami, Robert Miller Gallery
After Miami Beach began to gentrify, Betancourt relocated his studio to downtown Miami. There, while volunteering at the Miami Circle—an ancient Tequesta site unearthed at the mouth of the Miami River—his passion for history deepened and found new visual form. The downtown space also became an incubator for emerging visual artist such as Martín Oppel, Bhakti Baxter, and Daniel Arsham, whom Betancourt had already mentored. During this period, he produced “Images of Heaven,” an acrylic-and-mixed-media series that revisited Fracturism for what would be the last time; it culminated in a solo exhibition of the same title at St. Thomas University Gallery.
Seeking “the archaic within the contemporary,” Betancourt turned next to neo-primitive, three-dimensional wall assemblages. The impulse crystallized in “The Sounds Symbols Project” (2000), a monumental, ephemeral sculpture placed on the sand of Miami Beach. Best appreciated from a helicopter, the piece garnered international coverage and confirmed his instinct to anchor present-day art in deep time.
Parallel to these installations, Betancourt pushed photography into large-format vinyl works with “The Worshipping of Our Ancestors” and “Interventions in Nature” series. He has described these artworks as a return to the primal—an effort to reorder the vast information absorbed during the Fracturism years and shift his practice decisively toward memory.
The vinyl series attracted renowned New York dealer Robert Miller, who signed Betancourt in 2001 and hosted his first solo gallery show in Manhattan that same year. Following this exhibit, the series was presented in multiple galleries and institutions, including the artist’s first museum solo show at the Lowe Art Museum in Miami.
Wynwood, the Caribbean and El Portal
Betancourt was among the first artists to moved and have a studio in Wynwood, a mostly Puerto Rican suburb in Miami that was ripe for an underground arts community. Notable works from this epoch include “Interventions in Wynwood I & II” (2003), created in his studio’s backyard, and “Intervention with Aracoel Object” (2001)—dozens of his late grandmother’s possessions drenched in blue glitter and poised atop a compact mound of soil, a meditation on the memories embedded in objects. The installation has been included in multiple museum and galleries exhibits throughout the years.
Embracing the landscapes of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the broader Caribbean, Betancourt found a second studio home in the Puerto Rican rain forest, working from a secluded bed-and-breakfast he discovered with architect Alberto Latorre. The setting yielded pieces such as “Three Pointer in El Río Blanco” (2002), “Petroglyphs and Surfer Shorts”(2003), “Bejigante en Casa Flamboyant” (2006), “Sunday Afternoon in El Yunque” (2008), and “The Enchanted Garden” (2008). He also launched the ongoing “Re-Collections” series (2008– ), kaleidoscopic photo-collages built from hundreds of clip-art fragments, compositions that alluded to photo albums and the memories they hold.
Eventually Betancourt and Latorre purchased the adjacent parcel in the rain forest—complete with majestic waterfalls and lush landscapes that now recur in his imagery.
Back in Miami, day-to-day life became direct source material for the “El Portal” series (2011), reflections on the artist’s own neighborhood and residence. From his Little River (Little Haiti) studio, he and Latorre devised suspended, ceiling-hung constellations such as “Appropriations from El Río” (2013) and “Appropriations del Mar y Amor”(2014), dense with hundreds of related found elements seemingly frozen in mid-air. The wall-assemblages series “Disposable Memories” (2012) fused hundreds of jewelry fragments in nearly invisible resin, while “Times of Illuminations” (2017) assembled more than a hundred vintage, star-shaped Christmas-tree toppers—objects gathered over a decade—into a radiant field. Exhibited at Primary Projects, the piece has become a destination artwork; Betancourt likens it to “recalling all things enchanted… perhaps even a piece of the night sky.” A hand-held “magic wand” activates its internal lights, merging nostalgia with spectacle—and, more importantly, awakening the memories these treasured objects contain.
By this time, Betancourt’s practice has moved from Fracturism’s fractured data and merging it into a poetics of recollection—mining history, place, personal narrative and memories, re-examining the past and presenting it in a new context.
Archaic Substance and Public Art
In 2011, Carlos Betancourt and architect Alberto Latorre—who by then had collaborated on several public art installations—created Archaic Substance, a prominent feature of Miami International Airport's North Terminal. Commissioned by Miami-Dade Art in Public Places, the work incorporates stone and glass materials applied to glass and substrate walls, as well as elevator surfaces. The installation explores themes of transformation and the layering of time and memory, using natural materials to create a dialogue between the organic and the constructed environment.
The installation's title, Archaic Substance, evokes a sense of timelessness and universality, inviting travelers to reflect on the enduring aspects of human experience amidst the transient nature of travel. By incorporating natural materials like stone and glass, the artists bridge the gap between the ancient and the modern, the organic and the industrial. This juxtaposition serves to ground the viewer, offering a moment of contemplation and connection within the bustling airport environment.
Archaic Substance exemplifies Betancourt and Latorre's collaborative approach to public art, where architectural elements and artistic vision converge to create immersive experiences that resonate with a diverse audience. Their work at Miami International Airport stands as a testament to the power of art to transform public spaces into sites of reflection and cultural dialogue.
Skira/Rizzoli Monograph and Mid-Career Retrospective in Puerto Rico
In October 2015, Carlos Betancourt: Imperfect Utopia was published by Skira/Rizzoli, offering the first comprehensive monograph on the artist’s career. Featuring over 250 images, the book presents a vibrant visual and critical exploration of Betancourt’s multifaceted practice. Accompanying texts by distinguished contributors—Yale University art historian Robert Farris Thompson, Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco, and art critic Paul Laster—frame the artist’s work within broader cultural, historical, and poetic contexts.
The monograph was met with critical acclaim, selected as Interview Magazine’s Art Book of the Month, and quickly went into a second printing. Betancourt has since participated in numerous book signings at museums and cultural institutions across the U.S. and abroad, engaging in public dialogues with figures such as Richard Blanco, Bonnie Clearwater (Director, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale), and José Diaz (Chief Curator, The Andy Warhol Museum).
Coinciding with the release of the book, Re-Collections—a mid-career retrospective—opened in November 2015 at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC) in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Spanning six galleries and the museum’s central atrium, the exhibition showcased close to 100 works, including photography, assemblage, and major installations. Among them was a reimagined version of “En la Arena Sabrosa” (2004), a floor-based piece composed of hundreds of Dixie-cup sandcastles crafted from sand and soil collected across Puerto Rico’s beaches and rivers. As with the book, the exhibition received widespread praise and was selected as an Artforum Critic’s Pick.
Together, the monograph and retrospective marked a significant moment in Betancourt’s trajectory—offering both a reflection on the evolution of his practice and a reaffirmation of his enduring engagement with memory, place, and cultural identity.
Recent Years
In 2016, during Art Basel Miami Beach, Carlos Betancourt unveiled The Pelican Passage: Tide by Side, a large-scale work commissioned by the Faena Arts District to celebrate the inauguration of Rem Koolhaas’s Faena Forum. Curated by Ximena Caminos and Claire Tancons the multi-disciplinary artwork, an exuberant tribute to Miami’s cultural rhythms, was named one of the top five Art Basel installations by Condé Nast Vogue, further solidifying Betancourt’s place as a key figure in the dialogue between public art and place-making.
The following year, Betancourt was invited to speak at TEDxRVA in Richmond, Virginia. His talk, titled The Art of Memory, offered an intimate glimpse into his creative process, weaving together personal history and broader themes of transformation, memory, and the ephemeral nature of culture. That same year, his solo exhibition Carlos Betancourt: IMPRINTED opened at the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona State College, surveying work from 2001 through 2017. In 2018, Betancourt’s installation in the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art exhibition at the Orlando Museum of Art earned him the People's Choice Award, affirming the public resonance of his vibrant and multidimensional practice.
In November 2021, Betancourt presented Into the Everglades, a monumental digital projection cast onto a building in downtown Miami. Created in partnership with non-for-profit organizations Bridge Initiative and Bas-Fisher Invitational, the work was part of a broader initiative to raise awareness about the ecological and cultural significance of the Florida Everglades, including the plight of the endangered Florida panther. A month later, during Art Basel week and in collaboration with architect Alberto Latorre, he debuted Milagros!, a site-specific installation commissioned by the City of Miami Beach. Composed of hundreds of suspended metal charms inspired by the ex-votos and tamata of Mexico and Greece, the sculptural elements were hand-crafted by artisans in Oaxaca, connecting ritual, tradition, and contemporary public art. That same week, Betancourt introduced What Lies Beneath: Tipping Point, an inflatable sculpture in the shape of a massive iceberg floating atop a swimming pool. This project, created to support The ReefLine, a future underwater public sculpture park and artificial reef, was curated by Ximena Caminos and supported by Faena Arts and Algoram. These works, along with Betancourt’s recent Landscapes Re-Imagined series (2020–2021), were prominently featured in an editorial profile by Brett Sokol in The New York Times.
In 2023, Betancourt collaborated with animator Milly Cohen on a series of animated digital works that were minted and sold as NFTs, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting The ReefLine project. That same year, he contributed a comprehensive essay on the evolution of Miami’s art scene to the book publication Making Miami, drawing from decades of firsthand experience witnessing the city’s transformation into a global cultural hub.
El Milagro de tus Ojos, Mexico
Carlos Betancourt’s solo exhibition El Milagro de tus Ojos was presented at the Careyes Art Gallery in Jalisco, Mexico, from December 26, 2023, to March 1, 2024. Developed during an artist residency with the Careyes Foundation, the exhibition featured over 50 new, site-specific works—including sculptures, installations, and mixed-media pieces—that explored themes of memory, material culture, and the interplay between nature and the artificial.
The exhibition's title, El Milagro de tus Ojos (The Miracle of Your Eyes), is drawn from a 1967 ballad by Argentine musician Donald Clifton McCluskey, a favorite of Betancourt. This reference set the tone for an immersive experience where visitors entered through a cascade of colorful ribbons, symbolizing a passage into the artist's world of magic, memory, and love.
Among the standout works were two monumental sculptures: one crafted from found driftwood, evoking organic connection to nature, and another constructed from brightly colored plastic floaties, referencing synthetic materials and childhood nostalgia. These pieces highlighted the contrast and dialogue between the natural and the artificial, a recurring theme in Betancourt's work.
The exhibition also featured series like From the Aegean with Love: Agape and Hopeful Forest, composed of collected items from Betancourt’s travels in Miami, Mykonos, and Careyes. These works emphasized his continuing fascination with memory and the objects that hold it. Additionally, the Beautiful Heavens monoprints reimagined familiar Careyes scenes—such as homes, pools, and staircases—infused with vibrant colors and symbolic objects, inviting viewers to reflect on their own memories and connections to place.
Overall, El Milagro de tus Ojos served as a vibrant meditation on memory, love, and the material traces of human experience, seamlessly blending personal narrative with broader cultural and environmental themes.
During his artist residency, Betancourt conducted a series of community art workshops designed to engage local residents—particularly children and youth from the villages of Chamela and Zapata. The workshops emphasized creativity, cultural storytelling, and the use of found materials, aligning with Betancourt’s artistic focus on memory, identity, and the symbolic power of objects. Participants explored personal and collective histories through hands-on art-making, fostering a sense of connection and self-expression.
The workshops exemplified Betancourt’s commitment to collaborative art-making and his belief in the transformative power of art to bridge personal narratives with broader cultural dialogues.
The Reef Star
Among his most ambitious recent projects is The Miami Reef Star, a monumental underwater artwork conceived with architect Alberto Latorre for The ReefLine. This star-shaped sculptural reef, designed to enhance marine biodiversity and combat coastal erosion, embodies a unique intersection of environmental science, activism, and contemporary art. Its aesthetic elegance is matched by its ecological utility, making it both a visual landmark and a functional habitat. The project has drawn international acclaim, with features in The New York Times and Gagosian Quarterly, and is widely cited as a model for how public art can actively engage in the discourse surrounding climate change. A new iteration of The Miami Reef Star is scheduled to be unveiled in Nice, France, in the summer of 2025 as part of the United Nations World Ocean Conference, signaling the work’s growing global significance and influence.
Philanthropy and the Betancourt Latorre Foundation
Betancourt’s philanthropic efforts continue through the Betancourt-Latorre Foundation, which he co-founded in 2017 with Alberto Latorre. The foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, supports artists based in Miami and across the Caribbean basin. In its inaugural year, the foundation coordinated rapid disaster relief efforts following Hurricane Maria, delivering essential supplies to communities in Puerto Rico. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it awarded more than $30,000 in emergency grants to artists impacted by the economic fallout. Its current initiative, South Beach: Art, Culture, and the Last Underground, includes both a book and a major exhibition that will chronicle Miami’s art scene from the 1980s to the present, a period Betancourt helped define.
Now based in a new studio in Little River, Miami, designed in collaboration with Latorre, Betancourt continues to draw creative energy from the natural world and personal memory. His practice remains informed by frequent travel and longstanding ties to Puerto Rico’s El Yunque rainforest, and the mythic landscapes of Mexico and Greek islands, where he lives for part of the year. These environments—rich in ancestral memory and ecological nuance—continue to animate his exploration of ritual, material culture, and the poetic potential of art to reframe the past in dialogue with the present.
Collections, art fairs and awards
Mr. Betancourt's artwork is part of public collections such as the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, San Antonio Museum of Art, Texas, New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana, Palm Springs Art Museum, California, Bass Museum of Art, Florida, PAMM Pérez Art Museum, Florida, and Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico. His work is exhibited in various galleries as well as art fairs such as Art Basel and ARCO.
He is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the Florida Department of State Millennium Cultural Recognition Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, the Bas-Fisher Invitational Grant, the Florida Prize in Contemporary Art People's Choice Award, and the Miami Beach Arts Council Grant. He has worked as a curator, furniture designer, and has collaborated in architectural and site-specific private and public commissions with architect Alberto Latorre.