Photographer Cara Romero’s photo, “Amber Morningstar,” draws inspiration from her husband’s family tradition of doll collecting — a tradition Romero passed down to their daughter — and the lack of mainstream dolls representing Indigenous girls, Romero said.
For these pieces, she crafts life-sized doll boxes decorated with accessories and regalia from her culture.
“Amber Morningstar” is part of Romero’s “First American Girl” series. Romero spoke about the series, as well as her 2017 photo “TV Indians” at the Block Museum Wednesday evening.
The two works were selected for the 2023-24 Student Acquisition, a program where students choose works to add to the museum’s collection in partnership with Northwestern’s 30 Days of Indigenous and One Book One Northwestern. The talk was moderated by Aaron Golding, a SESP senior program administrator and co-chair of the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative Education Committee.
Romero was introduced by SESP senior Meena Sharma, the Block Museum student associate. Sharma described Romero’s pieces as “ironic, healing and playful.”
“The thing that strikes me most is that it wasn’t explicitly connected to humor,” Sharma said. “It challenged our own thinking, as it was humor that wasn’t centered in Western, white ways.”
Romero said she began to use pop culture references to integrate Indigenous people into mainstream American culture, viewing them as a part of the “fabric of this place.”
Raised in both the Chemehuevi Reservation in California’s Mojave Desert and in Houston, Texas, Romero said she realized people in urban areas had little to no concept of the contemporary experiences of Indigenous peoples.
She said her over 25-year career was inspired by a shoebox of old family photographs, which captures “a lived history that could be found nowhere else but in our community.”
Romero said she initially focused her photos on the aesthetic beauty of friends dressed in traditional clothing. However, she said these photos reinforced stereotypes and lacked modern context.
“This idea of placing us in present time and also referencing things like Coyote stories and myths that have come through time through oral tradition have been not only important to me, but also really important for me to communicate with younger Native folks that our existence is valid,” Romero said.
“TV Indians” was inspired by the intersection of new ruins in the landscape and American consumerism. Romero also sought to challenge the images of Edward Curtis, an ethnographer who often photographed Indigenous people in stereotypical ways.
The photo features Romero’s friends and family dressed in their respective traditional regalia, posed in front of numerous TVs displaying images of Native Americans in media during Romero’s lifetime, such as Lone Ranger and Tonto, Iron Eyes Cody and Billy Jack.
The Block Museum Student Associate Cohort selected Romero’s work because of its emphasis on humor, which fit their theme for the Student Acquisition, Sharma said.
Isabella Ko (Weinberg ’20), The Block’s engagement coordinator and educator, said she was excited by the students’ interest in humorous art.
“What was really intriguing and exciting was that you might not always think of an art museum as a fun place,” Ko said. “Investigating what role that (fun) does have is different and interesting and fresh.”
Romero said she plans to continue her “First American Girls” series to represent more bioregions and tribes, and she hopes these works can serve as educational tools in the future.
Her pieces, on display until Dec. 1, are part of Romero’s responsibility to tell the stories of her people and highlight the individuality of each Native tribe, Romero said.
“Art has the beautiful ability to disarm people, so that people can have a psychological, intimate, unspoken attention with a piece of artwork and not have to argue with anybody or debate over what they’re feeling or thinking about,” Romero said. “And sometimes, if you’re lucky and you’ve made a good piece, they’re all the sudden talking about really difficult subjects.”
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