Many collectors have heard of Cara Romero. An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, she’s staked her claim in both the Native American art sphere and the wider art world. Her narrative photography explores diverse themes of Indigenous identity through a contemporary lens, often placing her subjects in settings that feel vividly otherworldly. 

The Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College kicks off the landmark traveling exhibition Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light), the first major museum exhibition for the fine art photographer. Featuring more than 60 large-scale photographs, this exhibition covers two decades of Romero’s career, including new work never before seen by the public, as well as two interactive installations. Inspired by her 2017 TV Indians, the installation In (Re)Imagining Americana allows visitors to sit within a set of vintage televisions playing looped images and videos, framed by a photograph of the California desert. Ancestral Futures lets viewers immerse themselves in a futuristic space surrounded by cobs of Indigenous corn suspended from the ceiling. 

Cara Romero, Coyote Girl, 2024, archival pigment print. @ Cara Romero. Image courtesy the artist.

 

Cara Romero, TV Indians (Sepia), 2017, archival pigment print. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through the Sondra and Charles Gilman Jr. Foundation Fund; 2017.46. © Cara Romero. Image courtesy the artist

 

“Cara Romero is a fine art photographer and an exceptional storyteller,” says Hood Museum’s curator of Indigenous art Jami Powell, who curated the exhibition. “Her images are complex and generous, inviting people to ask questions they might otherwise be afraid to pose. I am excited for the opportunity to share this exhibition with audiences across the nation and particularly at the Phoenix Art Museum, which is just a few hours from the Chemehuevi Reservation. The opportunity to have a venue so close to where Cara grew up and in a city with a large Native population is something we’ve hoped for since the earliest stages of this project.”

The exhibition is organized into themes based on throughlines found in Romero’s photographic series: “California Desert & Mythos,” “(Re)Imagining Americana,” “Rematriation: Empowering Indigenous Women,” “Environmental Racism” and “Ancestral Futures.”

Cara Romero, Kaitlyn, 2024, archival pigment print. @ Cara Romero. Image courtesy of the artist.

 

Cara Romero, 3 Sisters, 2022, archival pigment print. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through the Acquisition and Preservation of Native American Art Fund; 2022.47.2. @ Cara Romero. Image courtesy the artist.

 

Romero explains that the title of the exhibition, Panûpünüwügai, means “living light” in the Chemehuevi language. “The way that we’ve put the words together, Panûpünüwügai, is a translation of the spirit of light. So, it has multiple meanings. It’s not just about the subject matter that’s in the show, it’s also about the spirituality of how light plays with the subjects, how the light is alive and how the subject matter is also living. It speaks to the nature of photography being a painting with light,” says the artist.

She adds, “In a photographic practice that blends documentary and commercial aesthetics, I love to create stories that draw from intertribal knowledge to expose the fissures and fusions of Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history and futurity.”

Cara Romero, Golga, 2021, archival pigment print. @ Cara Romero. Image courtesy the artist.

 

Cara Romero, Kaa, 2017, archival pigment print. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through the Sondra and Charles Gilman Jr. Foundation Fund; 2019.78.1. © Cara Romero. Image courtesy the artist.

 

Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) will be on view at the Hood Museum of Art through August 10. It then travels to the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona from February 28 to June 28, 2026, followed by the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville in Florida from October 1, 2026, to March 21, 2027. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog co-published by the Hood Museum of Art and Radius Books and will feature contributions by Suzan Shown Harjo (Mvskoke), former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (Mvskoke) and Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa), curator of Indigenous Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, among others. —

Through August 10, 2025
Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light)
Hood Museum of Art 6 E. Wheelock Street, Hanover, NH 03755
hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu

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