Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) Explores the Artist’s Dynamic Visual Storytelling and Challenges Dominant Narratives of Indigenous Culture
Jacksonville, FL — The Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville (MOCA), part of Arts UNF at the University of North Florida, is pleased to announce its featured exhibition Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light), on view October 1, 2026 through March 21, 2027. This exhibition is part of the museum’s America 250 programming. MOCA will host an Opening Celebration & Preview event on Thursday, October 1, with a community hour from 8 to 9 p.m. that is open to all. Museum members and donors receive early access to this preview the same evening.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
This dynamic exhibition, featuring more than 50 large-scale photographs, showcases the narrative artistic practice of Chemehuevi photographer Cara Romero. Spanning the past decade of her work, this exhibition presents a thematic examination of Romero’s complex and layered images, which examine Indigenous life through a contemporary lens, celebrating the multiplicity, beauty, and resilience of Native American and Indigenous experiences.
Romero is a renowned photographer whose visual storytelling challenges dominant narratives of Indigenous decline and erasure. Her work disrupts preconceived notions about what it means to be a Native American and shows the diversity within Indigenous nations and communities.
Romero says, “In a photographic practice that blends documentary and commercial aesthetics, I love to create stories that draw from intertribal knowledge to expose the fissures and fusions of Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and futurity.”
The title of the exhibition, Panûpünüwügai, means “living light” in the Chemehuevi language and refers to the spirit of light. It speaks to the way light interacts with the subjects in Romero’s photographs and to the nature of photography as a “painting with light.”
The exhibition contains five central series organized thematically, covering both Indigenous landscapes and mythology, absence and presence in American narratives, relationship to place, reimagination of gender and self-identity, and the celebratory exploration of possible futures. “Within photography, there is this incredible adaptability of the medium to create visibility and awareness,” says Romero. “I am always creating images that show how contemporary and diverse we as Native people are—always combatting that one-story narrative.” Drawing on pop-culture references and media (mis)representations, Romero upends stereotypical images and stories that all too often de?ne Native experiences and opportunities.
Her work also speaks to the relationship to the land. “Native people and our global Indigenous communities hold a sacred role in the health and future of the planet, said Romero. “Everything is connected. How do we shake it up and help people understand it’s just a fact that you can’t undervalue: we will never be able to erase these original instructions of ways of living in reciprocity with Mother Earth.” Informed by her love of magical realism and an understanding of time as circular, Romero’s photographs speak to the past, present, and future and highlight the importance of telling stories that are both complication and hopeful.
Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) is organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, and curated by Jami Powell, PhD, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Indigenous Art at the Hood Museum of Art, who stated, “Cara Romero is an exceptional storyteller. Her images are complex and generous, inviting people to ask questions they might otherwise be afraid to pose. I am excited for the opportunity to share this exhibition with audiences across the nation.”
SPONSORSHIP
The touring exhibition is generously supported by leadership gifts from Claire Foerster and Daniel S. Bernstein, Thomas A. and Georgina T. Russo, and support from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Charles Gilman Family Endowment, and a gift from Karen Miller Nearburg and Charles Nearburg.
The installation at MOCA Jacksonville has been made possible by operational support from the City of Jacksonville, the Donald and Maria Cox Fund, the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville, Joan and Preston Haskell; the MOCA Director’s Circle; the University of North Florida; and Visit Jacksonville.
ANCILLARY PROGRAMS
Juya Nokakamea (The Talking Tree)
Thursday, October 1, 2026 | 7:15 p.m. during the Member hour of the Opening Celebration
In collaboration with the dance department at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, and in dialogue with Cara Romero’s work, a dance performance will be presented at the opening of the exhibition on October 1, 2026. Nationally renowned choreographer Sam Aros-Mitchell is conducting workshops with the students leading up to the performance of Juya Nokakamea. Aros-Mitchell often works at the intersection of performances which enact memory, culture, and presence.
In Our Own Image: Visualizing Indigenous Florida (Utimile nenebohauela)
October 7–November 17, 2026
In coordination with MOCA Jacksonville’s featured exhibition of artist Cara Romero’s work in Panûpünüwügai (Living Light), the museum is pleased to present the accompanying exhibition, In Our Own Image, in collaboration with UNF Professors Dr. Denise I. Bossy and Dr. Keith Ashley. The exhibition will present the work of seven contemporary Indigenous artists whose work reflect many years of collaborative research into Mocama (Timucua) language, history, and archaeology. More importantly, they embody the deep knowledge help by Seminole, Miccosukee, and Muscogee citizens and nation about their ancestors.
SELECTED SPECIAL EVENTS
Opening Celebration & Preview
Thursday, October 1, 2026 | 6–9 p.m.
6 p.m. MOCA Donors, 7 p.m. MOCA Members, 8 p.m. Community Access
The opening reception will feature a tour of the exhibition and a performance by Sam Aros-Mitchell with students from the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts Dance Department with the presence of the artist, Cara Romero, choreographer Sam Aros-Mitchell, the Hood Musuem Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Indigenous Art Dr. Jami Powell, who is curator of the exhibition, and MOCA Jacksonville Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs & Senior Curator, Ylva Rouse. Light refreshments will be served from 6–8 p.m. during the museum donor and member hours. A public hour is available from 8–9 p.m.
Ideas of Our Time Lecture
Wednesday, November 4, 2026 | 6–7 p.m.
A roundtable featuring UNF professors Dr. Denise I. Bossy and Dr. Keith Ashley, together with curator Carly Treece (Mvskoke Nation) and Florida-based artists Alyssa Osceola (Seminole Tribe) and Cristina Osceola (Miccosukee Tribe), participants in the exhibition In Our Own Image: Visualizing Indigenous Florida (Utimile nenebohauela).
Coffee with a Curator - Cara Romero: Panûpu¨nu¨wu¨gai (Living Light) with Ylva Rouse
Saturday, November 7, 2026 |11 a.m.–12 p.m. | MOCA Members Free, Non-Members $15
Cara Romero will be joined by former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (Mvskoke) for a discussion about the exhibition and its corresponding publication in the Hood Museum’s auditorium.
PUBLICATION
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue co-published by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth and Radius Books. The catalogue features contributions by notable scholars including Suzan Shown Harjo (Mvskoke), former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (Mvskoke), and Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa and Tongan), Curator of Indigenous Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, among others.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Cara Romero, b. 1977, Inglewood, CA (American / Chemehuevi), is an artist known for dramatic fine art photography that examines Indigenous life in contemporary contexts. She is a renowned photographer whose visual storytelling challenges dominant narratives of Indigenous decline and erasure. Her work disrupts preconceived notions about what it means to be a Native American and shows the diversity within Indigenous nations and communities. In a photographic practice that blends documentary and commercial aesthetics, Romero creates stories that draw from intertribal knowledge to expose the fissures and fusions of Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and futurity.
An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero was raised between contrasting settings: the rural Chemehuevi reservation in Mojave Desert, California, and the urban sprawl of Houston, Texas. Informed by her identity, Romero’s visceral approach to representing Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and lived experiences results in a blending of fine art and editorial styles.
Maintaining a studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Romero regularly participates in Native American art fairs and panel discussions and was featured on PBS’s Craft in America in 2019. Her award-winning work is included in numerous public and private collections, domestically and internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim Museum, Amon Carter Museum, Peabody Essex Museum, and Forge Project Collections, among others. Romero travels between Santa Fe and the Chemehuevi Valley Indian Reservation, where she maintains close ties to her tribal community and ancestral homelands.
ABOUT SAM AROS-MITCHELL
Sam Aros-Mitchell is a Yaqui choreographer, cultural producer, scholar, and performer based in Minneapolis. He is a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow (2025–28), a McKnight Dance Fellow (2023), and the founder of SAROS field/works, a platform for Indigenous and BIPOC-led performance. For over eight years, he has also been a core collaborator with Rosy Simas Danse. Aros-Mitchell is also the founder of the NE/X Festival (Northeast Experimental): A Festival of Indigenous Performance and The Native Joy Play Festival: A Celebration of Indigenous Creativity and Community. He serves on the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) Council and is the founder of Aros & Son LLC, a Native-owned company he co-founded with his son to support Indigenous publishing, collaborative media projects, and mentorship. Across all projects, Aros-Mitchell’s practice is guided by kinship, ritual, and the belief that performance is not merely art—it is an embodied act of presence, memory, and cultural continuity. He holds a PhD in Drama and Theater from the joint doctoral program at UC San Diego/UC Irvine, an MFA in Dance Theater from UC San Diego, and a BFA from UC Santa Barbara. He is among the first Yaqui artists to reconstruct and perform José Limón’s The Unsung (Deer Solo) and Danzas Mexicanas (Indio Solo), infusing these historic modernist works with Indigenous embodiment and critical recontextualization. Recent original works include Juya Nokakamea (2024), a multi-sensory performance drawn from Yaqui creation stories, and Entering Aniam (2023), an immersive sound and movement installation.
ABOUT DRS. KEITH ASHLEY & DENISE BOSSY
Keith Ashley (Ph.D. University of Florida, 2003) is an archaeologist and associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Florida. His current research focuses on the Indigenous peoples and histories of southeastern North America, particularly Florida. Presently, he is exploring the involvement of St. Johns River fisher-hunter-gatherers in the broader world of Indigenous farmers during the 10th through the 13th centuries CE. His research also delves into the 16th and 17th century social landscape of the Indigenous Timucua-speaking Mocama. He is actively involved in archaeological excavations with UNF students throughout northeastern Florida.
Dr.?Denise?Bossy is associate professor?of?history at the University of North Florida and North American editor-in-chief?of?the Ethnohistory journal.?She received her BA from Princeton?University?and her Ph.D. from Yale?University. Her teaching and research focus on Florida, local Indigenous history, public and digital humanities, and the Native South. Her award-winning publications include?The Yamasee Indians: From?Florida?to South Carolina?(University of Nebraska Press 2018). Her forthcoming book?Yamasee: Indigenous Mobility and Power in the Early South, is under contract with the?Omohundro?Institute at the University of North Carolina Press. She is currently working with Dr. Keith Ashley on a public-facing book and digital humanities site that examines the deep history?of?the Mocamas,?Guales, and Yamasees?of?Northeast?Florida.?This work is being funded by a 3-year National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research grant.
MOCA JACKSONVILLE MEDIA KIT & CONTACT
Learn more about Cara Romero: Panûpünüwügai (Living Light) here. For questions or to schedule interviews, please contact Arts UNF Director of Communications Amber Sesnick at amber.sesnick@unf.edu or 904-303-0703. Press release and images can be found here.
ABOUT MOCA JACKSONVILLE
Located in the heart of historic downtown, the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville is one of the city’s most significant cultural assets. As the oldest art museum in Northeast Florida and one of the first contemporary art museums to be established in the United States, MOCA is focused on promoting the discovery, knowledge, and advancement of the art, artists, and ideas of our time.
In 1924, a group of visionary local women artists came together to imagine the kind of city they wanted Jacksonville to be—the kind of community they wanted to live in and be a part of. At the core of their vision for a rich, vital, dynamic city were art, culture, and education. Thus, what we now call MOCA Jacksonville was born—first as a series of exhibitions by artists of the day, used as a fundraising tool to support public school education; then as a guild; and later as an art museum and educational leader. In 2009, MOCA became a cultural institute of the University of North Florida and in 2025 the museum became one of only three percent of museums to achieve accreditation through the American Alliance of Museums, the highest national recognition afforded to American museums. More than a century later, MOCA’s mission remains focused on the art, artists, and ideas of our time, with a vision that unites education, creativity, and community building in the heart of downtown Jacksonville.
Among the most prominent contemporary art museums in the Southeast, MOCA’s exhibitions and programs set the pace for arts and art-integrated programming on a regional and national stage, with an emphasis on works created from 1960 to the present. Renowned in this community, MOCA casts the spotlight on Jacksonville as a burgeoning, vital arts destination. The museum is free to the public every Saturday during VyStar Free Saturdays at MOCA, as well as the first and third Wednesday evening of each month during Museum Nights at MOCA.
MOCA Jacksonville is located at 333 N. Laura Street in Downtown Jacksonville. For more information including hours of operation, admission prices, and upcoming exhibitions and programs, call 904-620-1214 or visit mocajacksonville.unf.edu.
###