
United States, from the Mexican Series
<p>Rosângela Rennó originally designed <em>United States (Mexican Series)</em> as a public art project of mural-size photographs installed in storefronts in San Diego and Tijuana. Working with Eduardo Zepeda, a photographer who specializes in wedding portraits‚ Rennó documented people from the sixteen Mexican states who had migrated to Tijuana presumably to cross into the United States. (The title challenges expectations by referring to the “united states” of the Mexican federation, not to its northern neighbor.) The subjects were photographed in their places of work, and the map of Mexico identifies each subject’s point of origin. The portraits convey the nature of experience along one of the most heavily policed and trafficked borders in the world.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1997
- Dimensions
- Each: 71.1 × 55.9 cm (28 × 22 1/16 in.); 71.2 × 55.9 cm (28 × 22 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Rosângela Rennó
Artist

Photography
Rosângela Rennó is a Brazilian artist working primarily with photography, archives, and found materials to interrogate memory, identity, and the documentary impulse. Her practice often involves the appropriation and recontextualization of photographs from public and private collections, transforming vernacular images into installations that foreground absence, loss, and the gaps between representation and lived experience. Since the 1980s, she has developed a conceptual approach that treats the photograph not as evidence but as a site of interpretation and collective meaning-making.
Full artist profile →More
More by Rosângela Rennó
Vulgo/Texto
1998 · Video-object with digital animation of words projected on Plexiglas, aluminum tripod
Double Crown (from the series Vulgo)
1998 · Silver dye bleach print
Wedding Landscape
1996 · Gelatin silver negatives and acrylic
Untitled (red boy)
1996 · Chromogenic print
Untitled (America e Cristo)
1996 · Inkjet print
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Rosângela Rennó
- Year
- 1997
- Dimensions
- Each: 71.1 × 55.9 cm (28 × 22 1/16 in.); 71.2 × 55.9 cm (28 × 22 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1997-099651
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified




