About the Artist

Cara Romero (b. 1977, Inglewood, CA) is a contemporary fine art photographer. An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero was raised between contrasting settings: the rural Chemehuevi reservation in Mojave Desert, CA and the urban sprawl of Houston, TX. Romero’s identity informs her photography, a blend of fine art and editorial photography, shaped by years of study and a visceral approach to representing Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and lived experiences from a Native American female perspective. Maintaining a studio in Santa Fe, NM, Romero regularly participates in Native American art fairs and panel discussions, and was featured in PBS’ Craft in America (2019). Her award-winning work is included in many public and private collections internationally. Married with three children, she travels between Santa Fe and the Chemehuevi Valley Indian Reservation, where she maintains close ties to her tribal community and ancestral homelands.

Artist’s website

About KaleidoLA

KaleidoLA is the Department of Art and Art History’s annual guest speaker series and is a featured program of the College of Communication and Fine Arts (CFA). For the past eight years, KaleidoLA has been a vital connection between Loyola Marymount University and the Los Angeles arts community. During 2020-2021, the Department of Art and Art History, in collaboration with LMU’s Laband Art Gallery, will thematically center artists whose artwork and lived experiences foreground issues of racial, economic and social justice. In light of COVID-19 restrictions, all lectures will be delivered live on Zoom.

For more information about this event, contact Karen Rapp, Director & Curator, Laband Art Gallery, karen.rapp@lmu.edu

Image credit: Self-portrait, 2018, courtesy of the artist