Arlet Gómez
Arlet Gómez is a Cuban artist based in Palm Beach, Florida, whose practice delves into memory, migration, and the fragments of childhood as territories in constant transit. Her paintings, vividly layered with color, light, and texture, become emotional landscapes where the intimate intersects with the collective, revealing the tension between roots and displacement.
Through luminous palettes, dynamic contrasts, and tactile surfaces, Gómez transforms recollections and everyday gestures into images that speak of resilience and belonging. Frequently incorporating Braille texts, she renders language visible and tangible, extending the canvas into new dimensions of perception. Her work weaves together symbols of nature, the sea, the sky, light, with narratives of migration, offering a visual testimony of the ephemeral and the eternal, the fragile and the enduring.
A graduate of the University of the Arts, Havana (ISA, 2009), Gómez has received international recognition including the Masterful Mind Award at the 6th International CFA Artist of the Year 2024, 2nd Place at the TRAHC 36th Juried Exhibition, 1st Prize at HMVC Gallery New York (2023), the Award in Painting at ArtiGras Fine Art Festival (2023), and the Palm Beach North Chamber of Commerce Award (2023).
Her trajectory spans exhibitions in more than ten countries, consolidating an artistic voice that turns painting into a bridge between worlds, the Cuban memory and the migrant experience, inviting viewers into a journey where everyday beauty emerges as an act of resistance and hope.
Arlet, your practice often positions childhood not merely as memory but as the seed of dreams, imagination, and even the foundation of mental health. How do you translate the essence of play, its innocence, unpredictability, and resilience, into a formal visual language that speaks to the complexities of migration, displacement, and rebirth?
For me, childhood is not just nostalgia, it is the first space where eternity plants its seed. The innocence of play, its resilience and unpredictability, mirror both the fragile path of migration and the promise of renewal beyond it. I try to translate those qualities into form through textures that seem to breathe, contrasts of light and shadow that echo both departure and hope. Play, in this sense, becomes a metaphor for life eternal, an echo of promises that sustain us even in displacement.
The integration of Braille within your works introduces a radical gesture of inclusivity, extending your canvases beyond the visual into the tactile. Could you reflect on how this decision redefines authorship and accessibility in painting, and whether it transforms your art into a shared language of perception rather than an exclusively visual one?
Integrating Braille was a way of making the Word visible and tangible at once. For me, the Word carries life and light, it is eternal truth breaking into darkness, both physical and spiritual. By embedding Braille into painting, I am not only expanding accessibility but also affirming that language itself can become presence. The act of reading through touch creates a shared language of perception, one that points toward eternity and reminds us that art, like the Word, can speak beyond the limits of sight.
In much of your oeuvre, there is a palpable dialogue between impressionistic lyricism and neo-expressionist energy. How do you navigate this duality of sensitivity and intensity, and in what ways does this synthesis mirror your personal journey of leaving Cuba and embracing a new life in the United States?
I’ve always felt close to impressionism because of its sensitivity to fleeting light and atmosphere, but I also carry within me the urgency and intensity of neo-expressionism. These two forces, delicacy and force, mirror my journey from Cuba to the U.S. Leaving my country was both an act of fragility and of strength, of breaking and rebuilding. So when I paint, I allow lyricism and raw energy to coexist, as if they were two voices of the same memory.
Your paintings celebrate gratitude and everyday beauty, yet they are also layered with textured variations and dramatic contrasts of light. How do you reconcile this emphasis on joy and ordinariness with the often complex realities of migration, adaptation, and cultural hybridity that underpin your narrative?
Gratitude is central to my practice, but I am not naïve about the complexities of life. My surfaces often show thick impasto, cracks, or shadows alongside luminous colors. That duality is important, it reminds me that joy is not the absence of difficulty, but its transformation. Migration teaches you to hold both: the weight of loss and the lightness of starting again. My paintings are an attempt to reconcile those forces, celebrating beauty without denying its fragility.
Water, sky, and natural elements frequently recur in your work, almost as if they become metaphors for fluidity, memory, and transcendence. How do these motifs embody your own story of crossing borders, and do you see them as personal symbols or as universal archetypes that invite collective identification?
Water and sky have always been companions in my work. They carry memory in a way words cannot, fluid, borderless, infinite. For me, they are personal symbols of my own crossing from Cuba, but they also function as universal archetypes. Everyone has a story of crossing, whether literal oceans or metaphorical ones. So when viewers encounter these motifs, I hope they see both my journey and their own reflection.
The notion of “rebirth” runs through your biography and artistic discourse. Could you share how your practice allows you to continually reinvent yourself, and whether each new body of work functions as a chapter in an ongoing autobiography or as an open invitation for viewers to recognize their own processes of transformation?
Rebirth is essential to who I am. Each new work feels like a small resurrection, of a memory, a hope, or a question. I see my practice as an autobiography in fragments, but also as an open invitation. I want people to feel that transformation is not exclusive to me as the artist, but available to them as well. Each canvas is both my story and a mirror where others can locate their own processes of becoming.
Your career bridges multiple geographies and cultures, with exhibitions in over ten countries and representation by respected international galleries. How has the global reception of your art shaped your understanding of universality in human experience, and in what ways do audiences from different cultural contexts respond uniquely to your work?
Exhibiting internationally has taught me that art is both universal and deeply local. In Europe, audiences might connect to the historical references of my techniques; in Latin America, there is often an immediate recognition of the emotional weight of migration; in the U.S., inclusion and accessibility tend to resonate strongly. These differences enrich me, but what remains constant is the way children, play, and gratitude speak across borders. That universality confirms that my work belongs to a human conversation, not just a cultural one.
Thematically, your art is rooted in gratitude and joy, yet conceptually, it engages profound ideas of inclusion, memory, and belonging. How do you balance this celebratory aesthetic with a deeper philosophical pursuit, ensuring your work resonates both sensorially and intellectually with its viewers?
I don’t separate joy from philosophy. For me, gratitude is itself a philosophical position, a way of resisting despair. By embedding Braille, by layering textures, by contrasting light and shadow, I create works that can be immediately felt with the senses but also provoke deeper thought. The balance is delicate: I want people to enjoy the colors, the playfulness, the light, and then realize that beneath it lies a meditation on memory, inclusion, and belonging.
You have often said that you are never completely satisfied with your works, that the piece you will be “most proud of” is still ahead of you. Do you view this perpetual striving as a form of creative discipline, and how does this forward-looking approach influence your process of making, exhibiting, and narrating your art?
Yes, I’ve said often that the work I’ll be most proud of is still ahead. That is not dissatisfaction, it is faith in the future. It keeps me humble and disciplined. Every exhibition is a step, every canvas a rehearsal for the next. This forward-looking approach gives me freedom: I don’t have to perfect the present work, because I know the next one will carry me further. It’s less about arrival and more about journeying with curiosity.
If play, light, and gratitude are the pillars of your artistic language, what do you hope future generations, particularly young audiences encountering your work for the first time, carry with them from your practice? Do you see your art as a visual archive of resilience, or as an ongoing dialogue between the innocence of childhood and the wisdom of adulthood?
If I could leave something for future generations, I hope my work communicates that play, light, and gratitude are not trivial: they are eternal seeds. Childhood is not just a phase we outgrow; it is the root of our creativity and mental health. My art, I believe, is both an archive and a dialogue: an archive of gestures that preserve the beauty of small, ordinary joys, and a dialogue between the promises of life eternal and the realities of human fragility. I hope young viewers leave with a sense that hope is not abstract, it is something we can live, touch, and carry forward.