Julianna Sanromán Rojas
Julianna Sanromán Rojas is a Mexican-American artist from Southwest Detroit working across painting, installation, and participatory practice. She earned her BFA from the College for Creative Studies and is currently an MFA candidate and painting instructor at the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art & Design. Her work has been shown in Detroit and internationally, including at MOCAD, The Scarab Club, Detroit Artists Market, Playground Detroit, and Gallery Omnibus in Dresden. Her practice has been supported through opportunities including the Playground Detroit Emerging Artist Fellowship, Modern Ancient Brown Foundation Residency, Visionary Resistance Fellowship, and Casa Lu Sur in Mexico City. Her work has also entered international conversations around deportation through research involving Nagoya University and partners in Japan. Sanromán Rojas explores migration, postmemory, tenderness, collective grief, and the ways people remain connected across borders and distance.

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Education

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2027
MFA in Studio Art,
University of Michigan STAMPS School of Art and Design, 
Ann Arbor, Michigan


2024
BFA, Studio Art and Crafts
College for Creative Studies, Detroit MI
Valedictorian

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Collections

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University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor MI

Henry Ford Health Art Collection, Detroit, MI

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Exhibitions

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SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2026
My Mother Is a Border I Return To, Casa Lu Sur, Mexico City

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

Routes & Roots, Woman Made Gallery,Chicago, Illinois

Embody: Remember, Reflection & Connection, Dorothy Gallery, Fairfield, Ca

Hilos de Identidad, Elaine L Jacobs, Midtown Detroit, Mi


2025
SOMETHING HOT , Scarab Club, Detroit, Mi

Gilda Snowden Memorial Show, Scarab Club, Detroit, Mi

Transforming Traditions, Bas Blue, 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

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


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

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Awards

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2026
Vision Award, University of Michigan

Hell Raiser Award, Labor Heritage Foundation, Maryland

Tinker Field Research Grant, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mi

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



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

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Press
2026
The Grief of Remembering the Absent One, The Deported One, El Central, Detroit, Mi

Artist Honor Southwest Detroit’s Grief Over Deportations With Community Altars, Planet Detroit, Detroit, Mi

Memory Is A Border I Keep Crossing, Lulu books

Detroit Residents Honor Detained Loved Ones, The Metro, Detroit, Mi

2025
Deportation Internal Sociology, University of Nagoya, Japan

2024
Artist Showcased, Axios Detroit, Detroit, Mi

Detroit Artist Paints the Pain of Deportation, Michigan Public NPR, Detroit, Mi

#33 December 2024, Suboart Magazine, Barcelona, Spain

2022
Marigold Anthology, Anhelo Anhelo, Detroit, Mi

Issue 2&3, Hey, I'm Alive MagazinE, San Francisco, California

             

Julianna Sanromán Roja Julianna Sanromán Rojas is a Mexican-American artist from Southwest Detroit exploring memory, migration, tenderness, and the ways we remain connected across distance.Sanroman@umich.edu  
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My Mother is a Border I Return To 

Mexico City
In “My Mother Is a Border I Return To”, Julianna Sanromán Rojas explores memory, care, and belonging through a series of paintings in which the maternal body becomes a territory, a refuge, and an emotional landscape.

Rice as Mother


hadndyed rice. prayed into for abudence, protection, nourisment.

During August festivals in Lagos de Moreno, we would make sawdust carpets created communally and laid for the saint, in this case Jesús del Calvario, to be carried over. I remember how magical this felt to me, running through it and watching the floor below me become a sea of rosa mexicana, royal purple, bright canary yellow, marigold orange, and azul maya. I would be in trance of the sheepskin drumline, the dancers where, for the first time, a drumbeat made me stop and notice. My hands, my body, myself. 

Ofrenda para Dos Cuerpos


Womb Marking (Ofrenda for Two Bodies)
rice, handwoven palm garland, jasmine, image transfers on wood, candles from calvera rose, moss, lavender from nadia, lele dolls from san miguel allende, my father Eusebio Sanroman,and Popos Market on Bagley, I biked past almost everyday for three years the morning smell of the tortillas next door almost always brought me to tears,I cross the bridge again. I look toward the train station and return to a smaller body, my mother’s hands around mine, guiding me toward the colmena.

This altar is made from rice made with my mother Emma, now dyed black, carried forward, and returned to the ground. Rice, a material of sustenance, becomes a record of devotion, absorbing time, touch, and intention.

At its center is the rabbit, my Mayan sign, a figure I carry on my skin as a tattoo, a gesture I understand as a form of blood offering, a marking that binds the body to lineage. Here, the rabbit reappears on earth, doubled. One above, one below. One carried, one buried.

I think of this figure as my twin, myself before language, before separation. A body in the womb, or a body returned to it. The altar becomes a site of mirroring: between mother and daughter, surface and soil, memory and matter.

Altars for Collective Grief



the rising fear in our community, a fear that when i was seven and now know how separation does not happen once it repeats itself in airports, phone calls, celebrations, and understanding that deportation not Soley as a policy but as a condition, as that someone i loved was here and they were there and the distance they can no longer cross. Altars for Collective Grief in Partnership with Theresa Beckley-Amaya a Detroit based hospice social worker.


We drank tea, held space, talked about how felt, we wrote letters to detained individuals, we loved and cried. we ate cake and worked with organizations in our neighborhood that allowed us to create this sacred space where participants would make these altars together.

Top Maybe I was never meant to hold the sun.