Artist Gabriel García Roman on overcoming obstacles: “Find an audience that resonates with your work”

Meet Gabriel Garcia Roman, an artist and craftsman who creates work that highlights the Queer community as well as the immigrant community.  He’s most known for my Queer Icons project, a portrait series that highlights the community organizers and artists of the Queer/Trans community of color. Gabriel is only one of the many Latine artists who is having their work featured as Target’s Latino Heritage month handpicked brands.

We got a chance to catch up with Gabriel and find out a bit more about his journey. Check it out!

• Tell us a bit about your upbringing: nationality, family background, growing up Latine
  I was born in Zacatecas, Mexico and migrated to the States when I was 2yrs old.  We settled in the northwest side of Chicago where I spent my formative years.  I grew up only speaking Spanish at home and English everywhere else.  Even though I grew up here I never felt American and identified solely as Mexican.  Years later on my first trip back to Mexico is when I realized how American I was.  I’ve since changed how I identify and now call myself Mexican-American.

•  How did you fall into a career in art? Tell us about your studies, and accomplishments…
  I fell into a career in art when I moved to NYC some 20 years ago.  Having just moved to a new city and trying to find community I met many artists and somehow I found myself immersed in the art world.  I started making self portraits to help investigate the many layers that make up who I am and slowly moved from doing self portraits to portraits of community.

• How have your different projects helped find inclusion for the Latinx community?
  As a queer Latinx person I never saw myself represented anywhere in the art world or in media and I thought it was important for me to create work that included folks that looked like myself and with similar backgrounds.  I am using my art to amplify the voices of my queer community as well as my Latinx community.

• Tell us about the biggest struggles/obstacles in your career, and how you have overcome them?
  The biggest obstacle I’ve had to overcome in my artistic career is the idea that my voice doesn’t matter or that I’m not bringing anything new into the conversation.  I’ve overcome that by simply continuing to push through my ideas and finding an audience that resonates with my work.  This has given me the confidence to continue to push through and amplify my and my communities’ voice.

• What makes you most proud of the work you do? Share your “why”
  What makes me most proud is the community building my work has allowed me to do.  Sharing my work and having folks in distant places reach out and tell me that my work spoke to them and made them feel seen.  That is what makes me the proudest.

• Do you have a mantra, piece of art, person or ritual that has helped you in a proud way that you would like to share?
  I would say it’s my dad who has had a major influence and has helped shape who I am as a person and artist.  My dad had a limited education, yet he accomplished so much and was always finding ways to either repurpose or fix something broken.  I see these as building blocks to my own journey as an artist.

• About your future projects & anything else you want to add and promote!
  I have a side project making ceramic necklaces and I’ll be starting on that again in October so follow me at @gbrlgrcrmn on IG for more updates!

Stay tuned for more artists being featured during Latino Heritage Month and beyond!