PANÛPÜNÜWÜGAI
CARA ROMERO
October 1 – March 21, 2027
© Cara Romero Coyote Girl, 2024 Archival pigment print Courtesy of the artist
Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) explores the narrative artistic practice of Chemehuevi photographer Cara Romero. Spanning the past decade of her work, this exhibition presents a thematic examination of Romero’s complex and layered images, which celebrate the multiplicity, beauty, and resilience of Native American and Indigenous experiences.
Romero is a renowned photographer whose visual storytelling challenges dominant narratives of Indigenous decline and erasure. Her work disrupts preconceived notions about what it means to be a Native American and shows the diversity within Indigenous nations and communities. In a photographic practice that blends documentary and commercial aesthetics, Romero creates stories that draw from intertribal knowledge to expose the fissures and fusions of Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and futurity.
“I think it’s important for viewers to understand that my figurative women are not meant to be just human. They are meant to be of elevated, supernatural stature. The spirit of ancestors we possess.”
—Cara Romero
The title of the exhibition, Panûpünüwügai, means “living light” in the Chemehuevi language and refers to the spirit of light. It speaks to the way light interacts with the subjects in Romero’s photographs and to the nature of photography as a “painting with light.”
Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) is organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, and curated by Jami Powell, PhD, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Indigenous Art at the Hood Museum of Art. It is generously supported by leadership gifts from Claire Foerster and Daniel S. Bernstein, Thomas A. and Georgina T. Russo, and support from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Charles Gilman Family Endowment, and a gift from Karen Miller Nearburg and Charles Nearburg.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Cara Romero, b. 1977, Inglewood, CA (American / Chemehuevi), is an artist known for dramatic fine art photography that examines Indigenous life in contemporary contexts. An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero was raised between contrasting settings: the rural Chemehuevi reservation in Mojave Desert, California, and the urban sprawl of Houston, Texas. Informed by her identity, Romero’s visceral approach to representing Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and lived experiences results in a blending of fine art and editorial styles.
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Hermosa
Part of a series of photographs of Romero’s daughter Crickett Tiger (Muscogee Creek and Cochiti) created during the pandemic while their family isolated in southern California, this image was taken at Hermosa Beach at sunset. Unbothered by the surprise wave splashing around her, Crickett embodies the spirit of Hutsipamamow, or Great Ocean Woman—the creator of all life—from Chemehuevi and other California oral histories. In Romero’s own words, “The image pays homage to the original caretakers of this region—first known as Tovaangar. The three months we spent at the beach together in quarantine transformed us and became a communing and healing space of remembrance for me of Chemehuevi creation stories and songs we sing and tell of this place. The photographs that emerged became a visualization of the Indigenous worldview that these places, however developed, are still holy places to First Peoples.”© Cara Romero Hermosa, 2021 Archival pigment print, Courtesy of the artist
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Water Memory
In this image, two figures—male and female Pueblo corn dancers—float, suspended within a drowned landscape. The photograph references ongoing flooding in the aftermath of the 2011 Las Conchas wildfire in northern New Mexico. Although the scene is frightening, the blue green hue of the water simultaneously imparts a sense of tranquility. Water Memory belongs to a larger series of underwater photographs that explore water’s capacity to hold memory, trauma, and life. Romero states: “ Water Memories are photography dreamscapes dealing with Native American relationships to water, the forces of man and of Mother Nature. They are individual explorations of space, memory, and diverse Indigenous narratives that are both terrifying and peaceful.”© Cara Romero Water Memory, 2015 Archival pigment print, Courtesy of the artist
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The Zenith
A reference to the astronomical term for the point in the sky or celestial sphere directly above an observer, the zenith is an imaginary space—a space of possibility. Romero worked with Muscogee Creek painter George Alexander to create this lighthearted and magical image depicting him as a weightless spaceman surrounded by dozens of corn cobs. She states: “We have cousins that grow corn out at Cotati. I asked them if I could borrow some of their corn, and they said yes. So, we went out and got a truckload of corn, and then we spent hours tying up corn with fishing line at the studio . . . We left a little space for him to sit in this kind of barber’s chair with a low back. He’s just leaning back in the chair with the corn floating all around him. Then, in post production, I very lovingly took the fishing lines out so that you can’t see them.”© Cara Romero The Zenith, 2022 Sublimated fabric print, Courtesy of the artist