by Christy Rodriguez de Conte

Paloma Rambana, 17, leads the youth perspective in arts, and it’s a fresh and invigorating insight into the future of arts administration and curation.

At the heart of it, one of the earliest forms of performance and creative expression consisted of an intimate exchange between invested individuals sharing stories. Humanity’s history is littered with stories whose differing perspectives call into question universal truths. But is that not the beautiful intersection of art and social engagement?

Maclay senior Paloma Rambana, arts activist and curator, roots her work in finding, collecting, and curating stories that might go unnoticed.

“I think, every day, I go out and interact with people, and I’m gathering stories from them. I think that’s the best part of it,” says Rambana. “It’s been at the core of why I’m curating in the first place. Because I know that everyone has this story that they deserve to have represented in some form of media.”

For many of us, our own experiences of storytelling revolve around food and family. Rambana’s home is no different. She grew up in a family she describes as naturally artistically talented and always sharing stories. She fondly remembers the influence her grandmother, a speechwriter for the United Nations, had on her understanding of the power behind art and storytelling. Rambana shares that her relationship with art has been a complex one.

“I never saw myself as an artist,” Rambana explained. “A lot of that had to do with the barriers that I had been putting on myself, as a person with a vision impairment, and the world had kind of put onto vision impairment with [the] arts. I just felt very stigmatized and that it wasn’t very ‘industry’ to be involved with a disability. Until I was shown the curatorial perspective.” Rambana proudly claims the role of curator now, giving credit to a curator, professor, and mentor, Stamatina Gregory, whom she worked with through a two-week intensive internship at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London. 

Read the rest of the article on the Tallahassee Democrat.