Antonio Romero’s Paintings Are Reflections of the Shadows of Power

Born in El Salvador, painter Antonio Romero has never had the luxury of political unawareness. “MIRROR,” marks the culmination of a residency at Kates-Ferri Projects in New York, is an immersive, critical diorama featuring pieces from both his ongoing Tropicalia series, begun in 2016, and new figurative works from his Navarone series, begun in 2019. The show presents a new narrative and symbolic climax even as it continues his exploration of power and how it operates in today’s world. Here, Romero invites us to reflect on the fragility of democracy and how what once happened in Central America continues to unfold across geographies. “We believed that, as societies, we had guaranteed rights and strengthened our institutions; however, it is evident that we must continue working in all areas of society to prioritize the collective interest over individualism,” he tells Observer.

In addressing these themes, Romero uses a highly allegorical, largely symbolic visual language. His figures read almost as shadows, inhabiting an ambiguous, liminal space. They dissolve into the tropical forests, camouflaged within the landscape, blurred presences that belong as much to the subconscious or to a collective nightmare as to tangible reality. He is more interested in developing an artistic language than a style, he explains. “That is precisely what I do: use images to create metaphors that communicate meaning and a sense of time.”

Romero relies on several recurring symbols across series. In Tropicalia, for example, he paints black-and-white landscapes in which the palm tree is the sole element, a choice that lends the image a vintage, remote quality, evoking the past like a film still. Repeated, the palm tree also becomes a metaphor for a unified whole. “It presents a seemingly idyllic scene, like a beach postcard, yet conceals an unsettling atmosphere… much like the present,” he says. The palm also invokes a cultural stereotype attached to the Global South, becoming a symbol of regions that today still face postcolonial socioeconomic and environmental struggles.

Romero, whose work can be found in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, MOLAA and Miami’s Colección Mario Cader-Frech and Poma Family Collection, initially painted many kinds of trees when he began investigating landscape. As his research progressed, however, he realized that the landscape we perceive is also a narrative of power—a construct that shapes how we live and use space. From then on, he painted palm trees exclusively. “They serve as a metaphor for the homogenization of thought and as a testament to colonization, understood in both its historical and contemporary contexts,” he says. A tropical beach in its natural state holds a great diversity of flora, but once the site is developed for the hotel industry, that variety vanishes. “Suddenly, the site just resembles Miami—dotted with palm trees—and the landscape becomes homogenized, turning into a ‘non-place.’ It transforms into a liminal space where the experience is uniform and differences are diluted.”

While this might seem to offer greater accessibility, it imposes a specific way of being in and experiencing the environment, according to Romero. It’s a model that erases difference and forecloses the chance to learn from otherness, since, under this scheme, otherness is perceived as undesirable or uncomfortable. “The landscape has been transformed into a postcard.”

At Kates-Ferri Projects, the entire installation is dominated by a blue palette, which conveys a sense of “unsettling” tranquility, as he describes it. “Psychologically, it evokes stability and trust, which is why political parties frequently incorporate it into their symbols and flags. It is a color that relaxes us and draws our gaze toward the sky, making it the perfect choice for the series.”

Blue has long been linked to power. In the Middle Ages, it was difficult to obtain and therefore expensive. “If a patron commissioned a painter to use blue, it signaled their power and status,” Romero says. During the colonial era in Central America, blue drove the economy through the exploitation of añil, or indigo, known as blue gold. The dye was extracted from the jiquilite plant, and the province of San Salvador dominated Central American production. Because the region was administered by the Captaincy General of Guatemala, itself subject to the Kingdom of Spain, blue for Romero is a color steeped in a history of power and resource extraction. “It’s the perfect color to speak of power, extractivism, and manipulation,” he adds.

The residency allowed him to trace connections between two states, New York and California. Part of the Tropicalia series is on view at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Long Beach, which also acquired two works from the series this year. At MOLAA, Romero “constructed a narrative about power and the human traces it leaves in its wake. At Kates-Ferri, I created a site-specific narrative—an exhibition that confronts the viewer with a concrete figure as they move through the space. When Natalie Kates invited me to participate in the gallery’s programming, I felt incredibly fortunate to work from that context—specifically from the space that shapes the way we live on a global scale—and to offer a perspective rooted in that context.”

Romero describes the installation as a cinematic environment, one in which the viewer is immersed in an expansive narrative unfolding within a diorama-like structure. “I work in series; I rarely create paintings with unrelated themes,” he explains. Working serially allows him to develop characters and the worlds they inhabit. “There are figures with covered faces, others wearing cones on their heads—almost parodically—or with blue-painted faces like stage actors, while some appear simply blurred; each plays a role, sometimes undefined, and, at times, they cross paths and coexist.” The settings follow the same logic: understated, almost nondescript interiors contrast with lush, repetitive exteriors. “It is like a film that unfolds, revealing new chapters as it progresses; the series possesses a certain cinematic quality.” Although painting remains his primary language, he has recently begun making video works that play with movement and sound.

For the exhibition, he designed a layout that allows both conceptual and chronological readings. “Upon entering the show, one encounters a portrait positioned at eye level; contemplating it, we do not merely look—we ‘transform’ into the artwork itself,” Romero points out. The path continues through a black-and-white landscape arranged like a theatrical backdrop, while its “mirror” landscape is composed of layered paintings. “It begins with a canvas featuring blue camouflage patterns and central portraits, shown both front-on and in profile, evoking police mugshots, then moves through a storm scene and finally encounters the characters at the end of the path.”

Romero’s work has always engaged with politics, but this exhibition invites viewers to draw parallels between Central America’s political history and the current situation in the U.S. “Above all, artists are citizens who perceive the turbulence of the times, especially in an interconnected world,” he reflects. “I approach these issues from the context in which I live; my perspective is not limited to it. The shift toward the far right is a global phenomenon, evident in the narratives of war and intolerance being constructed and in the growing criminalization of difference. This is deeply concerning, and I believe that art must bear witness to it.”

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