Things They Carried Away: A Visual Memoir of Leaving and Loss, Endurance and Self-Discovery
September 7 - December 18, 2026
Oldren Romero’s
Oldren Romero’s Things They Carried Away: A Visual Memoir of Leaving and Loss, Endurance and Self-Discovery is an exhibition about leaving home, loss, survival, and the search for a better life. The exhibition focuses on Cuban emigration, especially during the 1990s, when thousands of Cubans took to the sea in small, often unsafe boats in the hope of reaching the United States.
Romero’s exhibition focuses on a simple question: When people have to leave home, what can they take, and what do take with them? Some people are able to pack their belongings and choose what they want to bring. Others have to leave with almost nothing. But everyone carries something, their hopes, dreams, memories, fears, and the strength it takes to begin again in a foreign place.
Artist Reception
Thursday, September 17, 2026 | A-300 Lobby | 6 p.m.
Mary L. Fifield Art Gallery
About the Exhibit and Artist
Water is an important part of the installation. The ocean represents the journey itself, but it also represents fear, uncertainty, hope, and change. Reflections of water, light, sound, and floating letters create an environment that invites visitors to imagine what it might have felt like to leave everything familiar and face an unknown future. Each piece honors the people who have been forced to leave home in search of safety, freedom, or a better life. It gives special attention to those who made their journey across the water. The sea offered a possible path to a new life, but it was also dangerous and unpredictable. Many people survived. Many did not.
The objects throughout the exhibition represent these stories. They can be understood as part of someone's story: a reminder of a home, a relationship, a family, or a life left behind. The wheelchair represents vulnerability—the physical and emotional challenges people can face when they are forced to leave home. The floating letters suggest messages, memories, and words that travel across distance. Bottles containing small objects represent the personal things people hold onto when they cannot hold onto everything.
Romero is connected personally to the history of Cuban emigration. This exhibition grows from that experience and from an understanding of what it means to leave one home and build a life somewhere else. It recognizes that leaving is never only about traveling from one place to another. It can also mean leaving behind family, friends, traditions, familiar places, and parts of one's identity. The exhibition remembers those who were lost at sea and the families who continued on without them. It also honors those who arrived safely but still carried a deep sense of loss. For many immigrants, arriving in a new country does not mean leaving the past behind. Memories of home, family, and the people they could not bring with them remain.
Although the exhibition focuses on Cuban emigration, its story reaches beyond Cuba. Around the world, people leave their homes because of war, poverty, political conditions, persecution, natural disasters, or the hope of creating a better future. The reasons may be different, but the experience of leaving people and places behind can be deeply painful. This is a tribute to those who left, those who survived, and those who were separated from the people they loved, and those who never arrived. Above all, it is a reminder that behind every story of immigration is a person who had a home, people they loved, and a life they knew—and who faced the difficult decision to leave.
Oldren Romero is an international award-winning filmmaker. From his debut film Cristo Y Jesús: A Love Story (2014) to his critically acclaimed short film It Came from the Heavens (2018), his work has garnered over 100 short film awards. In addition to filmmaking, he curates international film festivals annually. Romero was born in Havana, Cuba, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1997.
He currently lives in Lynn, Massachusetts.