Center for Indigenous Studies and American and Indigenous Studies Program Present
Cara Romero: Following the Light
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
Preston
6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
A screening as a part of Returning Home: A Contemporary Native Photography Exhibition
Cara Romero: Following the Light is a 27min documentary on the work of contemporary fine art photographer Cara Romero.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.
Following the Light explores Cara's development as a photographer, delves into the Chemehuevi and California Indigenous history that informs her work, includes behind-the-scenes footage of Cara's shoots, and features interviews with leading Indigenous artists: Cara herself, husband and famed Pueblo potter Diego Romero, collaborator and place-based artist Leah Mata Fragua (Northern Chumash), and more.
Produced in partnership with the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) Artist-in-Residence Program
Directed, Produced, Shot & Edited by Kaela Waldstein
Executive Producers: Amber-Dawn Bear Robe & Lara Evans
Original music by Jason Goodyear
A Mountain Mover Media production
Returning Home is the first small scale contemporary Native photography exhibition to take place in the Montgomery Place Mansion at Bard College. The exhibition addresses long standing Indigenous child removal policies and practices of Canada and the United States, whose governments strategically implemented the kidnapping of Native children to be sent to Indian boarding schools during the 19th and 20th centuries to sever familial ties and dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land and lifeways. By introducing the history of the United States’ settler colonial past and ongoing present alongside the works of four contemporary Native photographers—Kali Spitzer (Kaska Dena/Jewish), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), Dana Claxton (Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation), Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke(Crow))—and poet Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee), this exhibition provides narratives of resistance, resilience, dissent, subversion, memorialization, and what Anishinabe writer Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance,” that disrupt historic and contemporary notions that Native peoples are helpless victims who are unfit to raise their own children – often infantilized by a paternalistic US government through colonial welfare practices. This exhibition is an intervention in a house museum whose history is intertwined with the forced removal of the Mohican peoples in early colonial New York.
Returning Home aims to highlight Indigenous representation, narrative, survivance, futurism, and resilience through contemporary Native art. The show will include pieces from the Forge Project's collection, as well as a written commission from Institute of American Indian Arts MFA Candidate Bonney Hartley. An accompanying publication will provide in-depth contextualization of land dispossession in the US, forced removal of Native peoples in New York State, and the impact of Indian boarding schools.
Exhibition Viewing Hours:
April 6 & 7, 1:00-5:00 pm (timed entry every fifteen minutes)
April 10–12, 1:30-4:00 pm
Schedule of Events:
April 6, 1:30 pm: Opening Remarks & Activation, poetry reading by Bonney Hartley (reservation required, doors open at 1:00pm)
April 6, 4:00 pm: Cara Romero in conversation with Suzanne Kite—registration required
April 7, 3:00 pm: Dana Claxton Artist Talk, on zoom, seating available at MP visitor's center. Register for the webinar here.
April 10, 6:30 pm: Cara Romero: Following the Light, Preston Cinema, Bard College. A short documentary on the work and practice of Cara Romero. No registration required.
Sponsored by Hudson Valley Greenway and the Mellon Foundation, as a part of Rethinking Place: Bard-on-Mahicantuck.Sponsored by: American and Indigenous Studies Program; Center for Indigenous Studies; Montgomery Place.
For more information, call 845-758-6822, e-mail [email protected],
or visit https://rethinkingplace.bard.edu/returning-home/.
Time: 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Location: Preston