About
Galadriel González Romero is a Spanish-born, Kenya-raised visual artist, Rights of Nature activist, and folklore enthusiast. Thanks to an upbringing in close connection with East African savannahs, forests, and coastal ecosystems, they have an ongoing sense of kinship with the more-than-human. This is reflected in themes of ethical collaboration between human and nonhuman beings, climate catastrophe, and speculative worldbuilding at the centre of their artistic practice and research.
González Romero works ground-responsively, a contextual research and collaboration approach to site as a living network of beings, relationships, histories. Creative output includes installations, interventions, and art objects with intricate narratives interwoven into the landscape in the form of speculative folktales or science-fictionesque accounts that speak to a necessary reconnection with our environment in this era of ecological collapse.
From 2022, they developed the works The Impossible Garden and A Portal to the End of the World in collaboration with botanical gardens and the beings that inhabit them in Reykjavík and Akureyri, Iceland. González Romero is a founding member of Snæfellsjökul fyrir forseta, Iceland’s first Rights of Nature movement, which nominated the glacier Snæfellsjökull for the country’s presidency in 2024. They hold an MFA from Listaháskóli Íslands, a BA in Fine Arts from Stellenbosch University, and are currently based between Iceland and Kenya.
Lectures, performances, events
2025 (upcoming) Performance (with Snæfellsjökul fyrir forseta collective): Opening of Confluence of European Water Bodies, De Balie, Amsterdam
Lecture: Planting Portals: Collaborating with Place as Co-creator, Tales of the Nature Spirits Conference, Akureyri, Iceland
Performance: A Portal to the End of the World, Akureyri Botanical Garden, Iceland
Paper Presentation: Glacier for President: Legal Innovation through Artistic Intervention, MOTH Festival of Ideas, NYU Law, USA
Panel: Rights of Nature, Vetrarhátið við Mývatn, Mývatn, Iceland
Event-lecture: Stories in a Cup (with Daria Testo), Future Festival, Reykjavík City Library, Iceland
2024 Collective lecture: Rituals for multi-being communication, New Rituals for the Multispecies Community Symposium, University of Amsterdam
Collective lecture: Rights of Nature in Iceland, Confluence of European Water Bodies, Ca’Foscari University, Venice, Italy
Education & Papers
Co-author: Glacier for President: Legal Innovation through Artistic Intervention, for MOTH Festival of Ideas
MA Thesis: Planting Portals during the Apocalypse :Modelling Collaborative Futures through Folklore and Ground Responsiveness in a Climate-Endangered North
Iceland University of the Arts, MA Fine Art, 2024
University of Stellenbosch, BA (Hons) Fine Arts, 2015
Exhibitions
2024 Tracing Roots - Thin Filaments and Porous Forms, Nýlistasafnið, Iceland
Að jökla, Mengi, Iceland
A Portal to the End of the World, Hulduland, Iceland
2023 Lunglike Shadows, Reykjavík, Iceland
Epiphytes, Botanical Garden of Reykjavík, Iceland
2022 Everybody Has To Be Slightly Unhappy, LHÍ, Iceland
Within a Stone’s Throw, Verksmiðjan á Hjalteyri, Iceland
2020 Sóttqueen, Ásmundarsalur, Reykjavík, Iceland
Photography 20:20, One Off Gallery, Nairobi, Kenya
2019 Laura, SIM Gallery, Reykjavík, Iceland
Why Not Orange?, SIM Gallery, Reykjavík, Iceland
Namut, SIM Gallery, Reykjavík, Iceland
2018 Open house at NES Artist Residency, Skagaströnd, Iceland
2017 Westgate Art Gallery Pop-up, Westgate, Nairobi, Kenya
2015 Gradex, US Visual Arts Department, Stellenbosch, South Africa
2014 Look Into My Eyes, The Piano Bar, Cape Town, South Africa
2013 Red Bull Studio Sessions, PJ Olivier Arts Centre, Stellenbosh South Africa
The Poetics of Space, US Visual Arts Department, Stellenbosch, South Africa
2012 Paint Me A Future vol. ii, Gazzambo Gallery, Madrid, Spain
Paint Me A Future vol. i, Panafric, Nairobi, Kenya
2011 When Elephants Dream, Que Pasa, Nairobi, Kenya
Artist Residencies
2021 GilsfjordurArts, Gilsfjörður, Iceland
2019 Fish Factory, Stöðvarfjördur, Iceland
SIM Residency, Reykjavík, Iceland
2018 NES Artist Residency, Skagaströnd, Iceland
Collections
Tawi Lodge, Amboseli, Kenya
The Red Pepper House, Lamu, Kenya