Artists
Julianna Sanroman
Career Level: Emerging
Medium: Painting
Open for Commissions: Yes
I bloom in the light my mother prayed for
http://www.juliannasanromanrojas.com
https://www.instagram.com/juliannasanroman/
About
Julianna Sanromán Rojas is a Mexican American artist from Southwest Detroit with roots in Jalisco, Mexico, currently pursuing her MFA at the Stamps School of Art & Design. Through painting and installation, her work explores migration, deportation, incarceration, memory, and domestic ritual, often using rice as a material collaborator connected to care, labor, and intergenerational knowledge. She received her BFA from the College for Creative Studies as valedictorian and recipient of the Imre J. Molnar Award for excellence in painting, and is a 2024 Emerging Artist Fellow with Playground Detroit, a 2025 Modern Ancient Brown Fellow, and a 2026 Visionary Resistance Fellowship recipient.
Artist Statement
Julianna Sanromán Rojas creates paintings and installations that function as altar spaces where memory, grief, and care are held collectively. Rooted in experiences of migration, deportation, incarceration, and family separation, her work explores how absence continues to shape intimacy, identity, and home across generations. Working between the studio, domestic space, and community, she uses rice as both material and collaborator dyeing, carrying, and pressing it into surfaces through repetitive gestures connected to labor, prayer, and remembrance. Often working alongside her mother, these shared acts allow intergenerational knowledge and familial presence to become embedded within the work itself.
Her installations remain open to change as materials shift, settle, and transform over time, reflecting instability, endurance, and care. Through painting, installation, and communal ritual, Sanromán Rojas creates spaces where those separated by borders, systems, or loss can remain present. Her practice asks how tenderness can exist alongside grief, and how collective acts of remembrance and care can become forms of resistance.
Gallery
Upcoming Exhibitions:
2026 HOTDAM, Detroit Artist Market, Detroit, Mi
Past Exhibitions:
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2026 Where We Still Meet, Detroit Artist Market, Detroit, Mi
2024 What Lived and Died Between Us, Playground Detroit, Detroit, Mi
COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS
2026 Gilda Snowden Memorial Show, Scarab Club, Detroit, MI
Detroit Artist Market x Wasserman Projects , Bas Blue, Detroit, Mi
We Ran Toward Each Other, Stamps MFA First Year Exhibition, Ann Arbor, Mi
2025 SOMETHING HOT , Scarab Club, Detroit, MI
Water, Norwest Gallery, Detroit, Mi
Sanctuary, Swords into Plowshares, Detroit, Mi
People Are Strange, Galerie Camille, Detroit, Mi
Muerte A la Distancia, The Voyeur Bordello, Detroit, Mi
‘Remember Me Loving You’, Short Film SW Fest, Detroit, Mi
Cariño, Mexicantown Community Development, Detroit, Mi
Girlhood,MOCAD, Detroit, MI
Los Angeles Fundraiser, Playground Detroit, Detroit,Mi
2024 Abstraction, Gallery Omnibus, Dresden, Germany
Transmitir, Vamonos, Detroit, Mi
In the Beginning, Scarab Club, Detroit, Mi
Student Scholarship Show, Detroit Artist Market, Detroit, Mi
Sovereignty, Garage Cultural, Detroit, Mi
Vuelta, Vamonos, Detroit, Mi
Taking Care, Herman Kiefer Hospital, Detroit, Mi
CCS Student Exhibition, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, Mi
More Than Today’s Tomorrow, 333 Midland, Detroit, Mi
Gilda Snowden Memorial Show, Scarab Club, Detroit, Mi
A11eviate, Mexicantown Community Development, Detroit, Mi
Julianna Sanromán Rojas
2023 Art of BasBlue, Bas Blue X Wasserman Projects, Detroit, Mi
When Care is An Art, Scarab Club, Detroit, Mi
2022 Poor Man's Art Collection, The Gallery at Brewery Park, Detroit, Mi
Art Prize, Fountain Street Church, Grand Rapids, Mi
Rooted and Cloudy, U245, Detroit, Mi
2021 In Retrospect, The HUB Gallery, Detroit, Mi
La Gatita Amable, Bagley Central, Detroit, Mi
Awards & Residencies:
RESIDENCIES & FELLOWSHIPS
2026 Casa Lu Sur, Mexico City, Mexico
Visionary Resistance Fellowship, Detroit Mi
2024 Post-Baccalaureate Resident, Modern Ancient Brown Foundation, Detroit Mi
Emerging Artist Fellow, Playground Detroit, Detroit, Mi
Center of Gravity Residency, Walkaway House, North Adams, MA 2023 Common Grounds Cooperative Mural Residency, Traverse City, Mi 2022 Inside Southwest Summer Residency, Detroit, Mi
AWARDS & HONORS
2025 Center for Education Women, Elise Choy Lee Scholar, University of Michigan Rackham Merit Fellowship, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mi WCEJ Thornton Foundation Music & Art Scholarship
2024 Imre J. Molnar Artistic Achievement Award, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, Mi
2023
B&E Ford Scholarship, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, Mi
2022
Detroit Society of Women Painters and Sculptors Scholarship, Detroit Society of Women Painters and Sculptors, Detroit, Mi WCEJ Thornton Foundation Music & Art Scholarship
James Banton Endowment Scholarship, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, Mi
2021
Dean’s Award Scholarship, College for Creative Studies, Detroit, Mi
Press & Media Links:
https://elcentralmedia.com/the-grief-of-remembering-the-absent-one-the
https://planetdetroit.org/2026/01/southwest-detroit-immigration-artist
https://www.michiganpublic.org/podcast/stateside/2024-10-25/stateside-