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person Lillian Wilkie

newspaper The Guardian article 0 articles

‘She slept in the hallway on a lawn chair’: how Bettina’s astonishing art outgrew her Chelsea Hotel room

The article profiles Bettina Grossman, known simply as Bettina, a reclusive artist who lived and worked in a small room at New York's Chelsea Hotel for decades. Her room was filled to the brim with Xeroxed word art, geometric sculptures, photographs, and collections of leaves, reflecting 40 years of fervent creative output. Artist Yto Barrada, who edited a book about Bettina, describes the overwhelming accumulation of works that forced Bettina to sleep on a lawn chair in the hallway. Bettina's work, including sculptures, photographs, and films, is now featured in an exhibition called 'Bettina: Finite Structures' as part of the Glasgow International festival, showcasing pieces like a newly digitized 8mm animation and distorted photographic reflections of skyscrapers.