Cara Romero Survey Named in Hyperallergic’s “Best Art Shows Around the World in 2025”

Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) is included in Hyperallergic’s yearend collection of the best art exhibitions of 2025. This major survey, curated by Jami C. Powell at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, presents 63 artworks created between 2013 and 2025, highlighting Romero’s virtuosity in her portrayals of Native women and Indigenous resilience.

The works are presented according to five themes: California Desert & Mythos, (Re)Imagining Americana, Rematriation: Empowering Indigenous Women, Environmental Racism, and Ancestral Futures. Romero’s photographs blend documentary, fine art, and editorial aesthetics to create narratives honoring Indigenous knowledge systems and the interactions between cultural memory and Indigenous futurisms.

“I don’t know of a photographer working today who is more visually exciting and innovative than Cara Romero,” writes critic Seph Rodney. He draws particular attention to the works in Ancestral Futures, which include Romero’s Alika series, a celebration of Afro-Indigeneity featuring writer-director Alika Sheyahshe-Mteuzi posing in painted stripes that reference Caddo body painting and the Pan-African flag. Through these and other works of Indigenous subjects in celestial and otherworldly settings, Romero imagines boundless futures for Native people, rooted in continuing Indigenous lifeways and survivance.

Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) opens at the Phoenix Art Museum on February 27, 2026. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog.