In each chapter, in conversation between the most remarkable artists from Latin-America and Latinxs in the US, and our MOLAA Chief Curator Gabriela Urtiaga, we place the focus on a series or specific artwork which requires a close inspection and deliberate process of contemplation, and exploration; delving into the ideas surrounding the creation of the works, their sources of research and inspiration, in an effort to immerse ourselves in the world of the artists.
This session will be live in Spanish. Live translation will be provided.
Antonio Romero (El Salvador, 1978)
Multidisciplinary artist who combines his artistic practice with curatorial work. He holds a degree in Fine Arts with a specialization in painting. His work was recently on view in the section Dispositivo 92: Can History Be Rewound? at the Museo Reina Sofía through the end of 2025, and in Trópico Telúrico at the Museo de Arte de El Salvador through 2026.
His work is included in international public and private collections such as the Museo Reina Sofía (Spain), the Mario Cader-Frech Collection (United States), the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) (United States), the Fondazione Imago Mundi (Italy), the Llorente y Cuenca Collection (Spain), and the Fundación Rozas Botrán (Guatemala).
He has presented eleven solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions in El Salvador, France, the United States, Canada, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Spain, in institutions and spaces including the Museo de Antropología and Museo de Arte de El Salvador, Galería EXTRA (Guatemala), Museo de Arte y Diseño (Costa Rica), Kates Ferri Project Gallery (New York), and Galería Memoria (Spain), among others.
He has received several recognitions, including the Y.ES Artist Academy Fellowship from the Y.ES Contemporary Foundation in 2022. Additional awards include First Place in the Contemporary Painting Salon (El Salvador, 2016); Second Place in the IX Young Art Prize (El Salvador, 2008); First Place in the XX Diplomat Palmarés (El Salvador, 2004); First Place in the III Young Painting Prize (El Salvador, 2002); and Second Place in the Latin American Art Auction and Competition “Juannio” (Guatemala, 2002).
Artist Statement
My work emerges from the context of and acts as a response to power and its narratives. Painting, as the primary medium in my practice, is not intended to be ornamental, but rather conceptual and political, engaging with memory and social trauma.
I am currently developing two “sister” series, connected through their narrative continuity:
“Navarone” constructs unsettling scenes with anonymous figures that thicken the atmosphere, creating a psychological link between the works and their viewers. The everyday nature of “Navarone” contrasts with the normalization of violence, and through faces covered with balaclavas, it functions as a mirror of seemingly ordinary lives in their ambivalent roles as either victims or perpetrators.
“Tropicalia” is approached through landscape as a fictionalized setting, operating as a metaphor. The audience becomes another character within an atmosphere conceived as an installation. Through a horizon of landscapes rendered on large-scale canvases, the works create an installation-like environment (as a staged setting) that incorporates viewers as “characters,” so that the painting itself is not the exhibition, but rather the atmosphere in which the viewer becomes the one on display.