HANOVER, New Hampshire — A younger Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) girl, Amedée Niamh Kauakohemālamalama Conley-Kapoi, gazes at her viewers with calm decision. Holding a poised hula stance, she leans to 1 facet, arms prolonged parallel to the bottom. Her expression radiates willpower and an unyielding presence. She is surrounded by hula implements, a few of that are her personal. A leaf lei hangs above her, whereas a stack of books on Kānaka Maoli historical past and tradition from Dartmouth School’s library sits neatly within the decrease proper nook of the thick border that frames her. This work, “Amedée” (2024), is a part of Cara Romero’s (Chemehuevi) First American Doll portrait collection depicting Indigenous folks. Collaborators somewhat than mere fashions for the artist, her topics actively form their very own illustration, deciding on the field’s designs, in addition to their clothes and the objects that encompass them. In “Amedée,” the field’s border contains a kapa (Kānaka Maoli barkcloth portray) design created by Lehuauakea, a Kānaka Maoli interdisciplinary artist and kapa maker.
The portrait collection poses a important query: What tales stay untold in mainstream American tradition? Conley-Kapoi, a Dartmouth pupil who positioned second for the 2024 Miss Aloha Hula Award on the prestigious Merrie Monarch Competition, wears the identical outfit she donned throughout the precise competitors. Her hula efficiency honored Princess Victoria Kawēkiu Kaʻiulani Lunalilo Kalaninuiahilapalapa Cleghorn, who was despatched to England to additional her schooling and put together for queenship within the Hawaiian Kingdom — a job she by no means assumed because of the Kingdom’s 1893 overthrow by American and European businessmen, backed by US navy forces.
Cara Romero, “Three Sisters” (2022), archival pigment print (courtesy Hood Museum of Artwork; all different pictures Sháńdíín Brown/Hyperallergic, except in any other case famous)
With this in thoughts, the company Conley-Kapoi exerts in shaping her personal illustration makes “Amedée” particularly highly effective. Her expression and stance exude self-determination, instantly difficult the reductive “hula girl” trope. As Noah Hanohano Dolim, assistant professor of historical past on the College of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, writes in his essay “Misperceptions of the ‘Hula Girl,’” the hula lady is commonly depicted as a fair-skinned “Hawaiian” girl swaying in a grass skirt, coconut bra, and tropical flowers — a picture that has come to signify each previous and current Hawaiian tradition. Regardless of her ubiquity on journal covers and product labels, Dolim argues that this determine is a commercialized mannequin, selling a gendered and stereotypical view of Hawai’i. By way of Conley-Kapoi’s selections and Romero’s lens, the paintings represents the depth of and pleasure in Kānaka Maoli womanhood, reclaiming hula as an expression of cultural resilience and energy.
This piece, together with three different pictures that includes Kānaka Maoli ladies who attend Dartmouth (“Kaitlyn,” “Ha’ina ‘ia mai,” and “Teani and Hope,” all 2024), is part of Romero’s first main solo present, Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Dwelling Gentle), at Dartmouth School’s Hood Museum of Artwork. The exhibition’s setting at a better schooling establishment feels particularly becoming: Romero found her ardour for images as an undergraduate on the College of Houston. Spanning 63 works created between 2013 and 2025, the present totally explores Romero’s inventive observe, foregrounding her sensitivity to particulars and topics. Every thoughtfully composed imaginative and prescient displays her dedication to sharing tales from an Indigenous perspective. Utilizing putting units and commanding poses and styling — together with empowered examples of nudity in “Nikki” (2014), “Kaa” (2017), and “Peshawn” (2022) — she facilities Native identities, imaginations, and histories.
Cara Romero, “Nikki” (2014), archival pigment print
The exhibition takes viewers via Romero’s imaginative and prescient of the universe. The tales she tells are formed by her connections to her Chemehuevi homelands within the Mojave Desert and different Indigenous ladies, in addition to the American cultural panorama, pure useful resource extraction on tribal lands, and Indigenous futures. Girls and kids, typically essentially the most weak members of Native communities, are central to her work, significantly younger Chemehuevi boys — her nephews — who seem all through her imagery as playful mythological figures. Her monumental pictures — many human scale or bigger, corresponding to “The Last Indian Market” (2015), a reimagining of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” — alongside main installations impressed by the dramatic pictures “TV Indians” (2017) and “The Zenith” (2022), rework the exhibition right into a immersive expertise, nearly as if her topics had been current and interacting with guests.
By way of images, Romero confronts the medium’s exploitative historical past, wherein Native folks had been ceaselessly objectified somewhat than understood. Her artwork additionally confronts the enduring colonial legacies embedded in establishments like Dartmouth. A standout piece within the present, “Cali Gold” (2024) from the Native California collection, depicts two younger Native ladies — Crickett Tiger (Muscogee Creek/Cochiti), Romero’s daughter, and Naomi Whitehorse (Northern Chumash and Sicangu Lakota), daughter of Romero’s frequent collaborator Leah Mata Fragua (Northern Chumash) — wearing glamorous apparel: heels, sun shades, and necklaces linked to Native California regalia. Their styling suggests they’re making ready for an evening out on the on line casino, but they’re located in a staged desert scene, surrounded by billowing smoke. Whitehorse, adorned with a standard Native Californian chin tattoo, wields a cash gun, whereas Tiger reclines on the bottom, fanning out a wad of money. They’re surrounded by gadgets that hyperlink previous and current: gold cash, money, tribal ID playing cards, and baskets. The label accompanying “Cali Gold” addresses the California Gold Rush of 1848, which introduced devastating violence, illness, and displacement to Native communities. It additionally factors to the rise of tribal casinos and gaming over the previous 50 years, a phenomenon each celebrated and debated inside Native discourse. On this {photograph}, the ladies reclaim histories of hardship and division via their commanding poses, assured expressions, and defiant presence. Their identification as the following technology imbues the work with a way of hope. Romero provides a putting rematriation of energy — one the place younger ladies assert themselves inside a Native California panorama deeply entangled with capitalism.
Cara Romero, “Cali Gold” (2023), archival pigment print
Set up view of Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Dwelling Gentle) on the Hood Museum of Artwork at Dartmouth School
This extra pointed lens extends to “Don’t Tell” (2021), however the energy dynamics are far completely different. The {photograph} portrays Gary Farmer (Cayuga), a notable Native actor, posed as a Catholic priest holding a cross whereas overlaying a Native girl’s mouth, with the shadow of a dangling determine looming within the background. Romero’s determination to forged Farmer as a colonial determine provides one other layer of complexity, difficult expectations round identification and historic roles. Casting a widely known Native actor because the priest might immediate Native audiences to acknowledge a well-known face, complicating the binary of oppressor and oppressed. It may additionally counsel how colonial violence has been internalized inside Native communities. In various methods, “Cali Gold”and “Don’t Tell” exemplify Romero’s daring, unapologetic method to historic trauma and colonial oppression. In doing so, her work challenges the predominantly White gaze that has lengthy formed photographic representations of those histories. By centering Native views, Romero not solely reclaims visible sovereignty but additionally asserts a robust photographic existence that displays Indigenous company and critique.
Romero’s work is preceded by a room that includes items by the prolific Chemehuevi basket weaver Mary Snyder (1852–1951) alongside 5 baskets labeled because the work of a “Chemehuevi artist once known,” some drawn from Romero’s private assortment. By together with Snyder’s work along with these unnamed historic items from the early twentieth century, the exhibition honors the legacy of Chemehuevi basket weavers, seemingly ladies, who got here earlier than Romero. She carries forth her ancestors’ artistry, presenting her work as a part of an unbroken lineage and a testomony to the enduring energy of Chemehuevi feminine creativity.
The exhibition’s subsequent cease is the Phoenix Artwork Museum, just some hours from the Chemehuevi Indian Reservation. This location provides significant alternatives to interact with Romero’s work in Arizona’s state capital, dwelling to a big Indigenous inhabitants, together with Native American and Pacific Islander communities. Amid a political local weather wherein the present presidential administration is actively whitewashing historical past and cultural establishments, seeing oneself mirrored in Romero’s pictures isn’t just affirming — it’s profoundly transformative. Her work underscores the continuity of Indigenous tradition and the ability of inventive reclamation.
Cara Romero, “Don’t Tell” (2021), archival pigment print
Mary Snyder, (left), “Olla (basket jar)” (1925–30), coiled willow and satan’s claw; (proper) “Olla (basket jar)” (about 1925), coiled willow and satan’s claw, variegated juncus
Cara Romero, “Amber Morningstar” (2019), archival pigment print
Set up view of Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Dwelling Gentle) on the Hood Museum of Artwork at Dartmouth School
Cara Romero, “Gikendaaso” (2022), archival pigment print
Cara Romero, (left) “Puha (The Path)” (2020), archival pigment print; (proper) “Yucca Woman” (2017), archival pigment print
Set up view of Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Dwelling Gentle) on the Hood Museum of Artwork at Dartmouth School. Heart: “The Zenith” (2022), sublimated material print
Cara Romero, “Paso Robles” (2021), archival pigment print
Cara Romero discusses her artworks at her exhibition.
Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Dwelling Gentle) continues on the Hood Museum of Artwork at Dartmouth School (6 East Wheelock Avenue, Hanover, New Hampshire) via August 9. The exhibition was curated by Jami C. Powell.
