Opening Day Talk: Selina Román

Trained as a print journalist, Florida native Selina Román ferreted out stories of injustice in marginalized communities such as migrant farm workers and the poor. After working in journalism, Román spent several years at an international security and investigations firm where she became privy to the inner workings of the private-sector intelligence community. That clandestine world, rooted in surveillance, gestures and coded details, rekindled her love of photography.

Tampa-based Román received her Masters of Fine Arts degree from the University of South Florida in 2013. She has participated in residencies with the Visual Artists Network and Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator. Her work is in the collection of The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota; the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art in Tarpon Springs; the Tampa Museum of Art, Hillsborough Community College, as well as numerous private collections.

Román has exhibited nationally at institutions such as The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Kenyon College in Ohio, and internationally at Edna Manley College of Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica, and Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She also exhibited at Brighton Photo Fringe in the United Kingdom during the 2016 Brighton Photo Biennial. In 2017 she received a Hillsborough County Artist Grant, and has been invited to participate in Review Santa Fe and Critical Mass Top 50. Her work has been published twice in the Oxford American magazine, among other publications. She currently teaches photography courses at the Ringling College of Art and Design.

Her work explores ideas of femininity, perception, liminality, memory, place, and how the invisible offers more answers than what’s visible.