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.

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.

Maintaining a studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Romero regularly participates in Native American art fairs and panel discussions and was featured on PBS’s Craft in America in 2019. Her award-winning work is included in numerous public and private collections, domestically and internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim Museum, Amon Carter Museum, Peabody Essex Museum, and Forge Project Collections, among others. Romero travels between Santa Fe and the Chemehuevi Valley Indian Reservation, where she maintains close ties to her tribal community and ancestral homelands.