For Venezuelan-born artist Gisela Romero, art is a bridge. It connects memory to place, heritage to present, and people to one another. Now living and working in Orlando, Gisela’s practice centers on drawing in many formats and on varied surfaces, and expands into printmaking, photography, installation, and public art. Her formal training includes an MFA from Pratt Institute and a BFA from California College of the Arts, grounding a decades-long career that blends craft with community.
Gisela’s work often begins with the intimate and becomes universal. In her ongoing Table Runner Stories, she transforms a humble domestic textile into a vessel for migration, memory, and belonging. The series grew from a single item she carried when she left Venezuela, and it has evolved into exhibitions exploring how families keep culture alive across distance. Recent showings in Central Florida framed the table runner as a living archive, using text, textiles, drawings, and installation to honor those who have had to rebuild far from home.
Her recent projects in our region continue this thread of community storytelling. At Arts on Douglas, Gisela presented Boxes of Memories, a focused body of work about how we store and retrieve the past, using narrative, drawing, and object-based installation. The exhibition invited viewers to consider the containers that hold our histories, both literal and emotional.
Right now, Gisela’s work is also reaching civic spaces. “WE,” her exhibition for Art in the Chambers at the Orange County Administration Center, places portraits and words in dialogue, making everyday citizens visible inside the seat of local government. The show runs from September 25, 2025 to January 27, 2026, with an opening hosted by Orange County Arts and Cultural Affairs.
As Gisela’s impact grows, United Arts is proud to support her work through visibility, connections, and a regional ecosystem that values artists as neighbors and narrators of community life. Your generosity helps make this possible. It fuels exhibitions that welcome multilingual audiences, programs that turn lived experience into shared understanding, and creative projects that honor the many cultures that shape Central Florida. When artists thrive, communities flourish.
✨ When you give to United Arts, you make this possible. Your support helps artists thrive, strengthens our creative community, and ensures everyone has access to the arts.
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