A Love of Cars Drives Their Art

Customized Culture Artist Betsabee Romero recently created a site-specific installation in East L.A. that presents the car as a symbol of unity between Mexico City and Los Angeles. Romero has taken five junked cars and refinished their exteriors to reflect cultural references that are common to Mexican and Chicano culture.

There’s “The Velvet One,” a form-fitting blanket of flowers that are painted on black velvet; “Petate Car,” which is covered with woven straw and has bouquets of dried cornhusks protruding from the windows; “Talavera Car,” an intricate mosaic of Spanish tile work; “Bell Tower Car,” with its rooftop appendage that recalls the architecture of a mission church; and “Back Yard,” which re-imagines the car as a piece of landscaping, with a section of lawn growing out of the trunk.

Romero talks with Los Angeles artist Gilbert “Magu” Lujan, who also uses cars as cultural icons in his work. Story, F2.

*

B etsabee Romero and Gilbert “Magu” Lujan are artists who both use cars as icons in their work. That’s no surprise, given they’re both from terminally congested metropolises--she was born (and still lives) in Mexico City; he’s from Los Angeles (and now resides in Pomona). But their work isn’t as much about traffic as it is about the car as a cultural marker.

Romero’s project on two lots in East L.A. (see F1) was commissioned by Iturralde Gallery and is part of the Absolut L.A. International Biennial Art Invitational. The installation mirrors a similar project she recently executed in Mexico City and continues her fascination with using cars as a basis for her artwork. For inSITE ‘97, the biennial exhibition of installation art in San Diego and Tijuana, Romero created “Ayate Car,” which used an automobile to represent the “cargo of hope” for Mexicans seeking a better life across the border.

According to Times art critic Christopher Knight, Romero “radically feminized the classic boy toy, gilding the chrome on a 1955 Ford, painting its canvas-covered exterior in a lush floral pattern worthy of an offering to the Virgin of Guadalupe and filling its interior with layers of dried roses. The car is parked, nose down, atop a steep hill in Colonia Libertad, where it appears to have miraculously jumped the nearby border fence.”

Lujan, a founder of the seminal 1960s Chicano art group “Los Four,” has long used cars, often lowriders, as a central image in his paintings and sculpture. A good example is his permanent installation at the Metro station at Hollywood and Vine, where he has created work both below and above ground, including a “Lowrider Limousine.” He focuses on cars as a way to preserve Chicano culture “through emblematic symbols.” With a grin that acknowledges the pun, Lujan says he sees the automobile, literally, “as a cultural vehicle.”

Earlier this week, Lujan visited Romero’s installation and then phoned her in Mexico City to discuss the project.

Gilbert “Magu” Lujan: I really like your cars because I also strive to make work that [reflects culture and] makes Chicanos proud.

Betsabee Romero: I’m interested in doing art in the street because I think neighbors share more than geography. I started this project in the colonia Buenos Aires in Mexico City, which is a neighborhood that is home to many auto part vendors. It has a bad reputation, people are afraid to go there and taxis won’t stop there. It is said that all the parts sold there are stolen, but I’m sure it’s not true. The people that have lived and worked there for many years, a lot of them buy parts from junkyards in California.

And some of those people have relatives in California. They are neighbors, despite the distance. They are the ones who put me in touch with [Pick Your Parts Auto Recyclers], which supplied the cars in Los Angeles.

In Mexico City, there are a lot of abandoned cars on the streets and they are just left there--as opposed to the United States, where you can’t leave cars on the street for any length of time. In Mexico, I can work on any abandoned car in the street, but when I started this project in Los Angeles, the city officials didn’t know what I was doing. They thought they were abandoned vehicles. They put notes on my cars saying if they weren’t moved in a month, they were going to be towed away.

GL: And do they now understand what you were doing?

BR: (laughing) I hope so! ... But the people from the neighborhood came out and provided a lot of help. They named the cars and contributed materials, including the bird on the hood of “Petate Car.” That’s why I’m never disappointed by working in the street because the people are often more interesting than those in museums. The residents would ask me if I was doing this work for an exhibition, and I’d say, “Yes,” and they’d ask where, and I’d say, “Here--they’re not moving!”

GL: Can you tell me how you conceived “Back Yard”?

BR: That came about because the land where I installed these cars is very dry. All the vegetation was yellow. I wanted a car that would literally take root there, that would become part of the earth. I think of my cars as cultural offerings, and so I thought of this symbolic taxi that would park in this courtyard, open its trunk and offer something that was living.

GL: I found “The Velvet One” interesting because people are now buying black velvet paintings. They used to make fun of that work, but now it’s being sought by collectors.

BR: Velvet is a texture that is elegant and invites touch, as opposed to the metal of the car. My cars are about changing the skin of the technology. Instead of being cold, metallic and industrial, the car becomes fragile, craft-like and handmade. I painted flowers on the velvet because they’re such a contrast with the dry terrain, and, because the cars are across the street from a cemetery, it’s also a sort of offering.

GL: I hope we can work together some day because my work is also a form of cultural exposition. I try and talk about the car in a different way because, for us, they’re a symbol of our point of view. We’ve changed its use. We use it for cruising, for families, for celebrations--all of this revolves around the car.

BR: In all Latin culture, the car, like other objects, can signify very different things.

*

Betsabee Romero’s installation remains on display through next Saturday at 3217 and 3229 Cesar Chavez Ave., East Los Angeles.