CARLOS Betancourt

The Multidisciplinary Artist Guru

It is no surprise that Carlos Betancourt won the People’s Choice Award at No Vacancy 2023, sponsored by the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, for his work entitled The Future Eternal at the Betsy Hotel. No Vacancy is a juried art competition that supports and celebrates local artists and converts Miami Beach hotels into temporary art destinations. The work showed gorgeous images of Christmas tree toppers reflected on the Betsy’s Orb (a large egglike sculpture wedged into the second floor of two buildings in the alley of the Betsy Hotel) and is quintessential Betancourt by celebrating his images that bring together memories, heritage and both Puerto Rican and Miami culture.

We sat down in his beautiful studio located north of Little Haiti to talk about his childhood in Puerto Rico and how his grandmother introduced him to the art world by sharing a copy of a Reader’s Digest magazine with Frida Kahlo on its cover. “I quickly understood that I wanted to be an artist…and very early on in Puerto Rico, my parents were sensitive enough with the little income that they had that it was important to foster that.”He moved to Miami when he was a teenager and found it hard at first, missing his home in Puerto Rico. But by chance one day he found out the artists Christo and Jean-Claude were creating their new project in Biscayne Bay. He volunteered installing the fuchsia fabric that surrounded the islands and started hanging out at the Leslie Hotel on Ocean Drive where the artists were staying. “So it was Christo that made me see Miami as a muse” and Carlos began discovering and adopting this new city. 
Carlos weaves his memories throughout his artwork highlighting nature, personal objects and images from his childhood and travels. See our interview to hear him describe the magnificent street procession entitled The Pelican Passage commissioned by the Faena Arts Foundation where friends and patrons walked through the street in costumes and celebrated with a piñata and a cake. Find out about his contribution to the book Making Miami that serves as an archive of voices from the Miami art community of the early 2000s. And finally, if you want to support local artists you can donate to The Betancourt – Latorre Foundation that supports artists based in Miami and Puerto Rico.