What if the place you’re supposed to call home is a place you’ve never truly known?
Ambar Santiago makes her exhibition debut at CityArts’ SIDE Gallery with “Guatemala: My Place of Trees.” Through fluorescently powerful color and dense layers of overgrown plants, Santiago confronts the complicated experience of growing up in the United States while feeling separated from her Central American and Caribbean heritage.
“Guatemala: My Place of Trees” speaks to anyone who has ever felt too disconnected from their heritage to fully claim it, but too connected to ever let it go. Rather than presenting Guatemala as somewhere familiar, Santiago constructs her own imagined landscape, a psychological map built from longing and cultural displacement. Her work transforms the tropical plant into a symbol of the search for roots, which is something that can nurture, protect, consume, and ultimately become impossible to escape.
At its heart, this debut exhibition asks what it means to create a homeland inside your own imagination when the real one feels just out of reach. “Guatemala: My Place of Trees” is a reminder that sometimes the landscape we make to find ourselves can become the very thing that swallows us whole.
In the last six months, Ambar Santiago has risen to prominence in Orlando through her advocacy for women artists. Because of this advocacy, she won WOMEN OF IMPACT in the Arts - Rising Star, presented by Nosotras Latinas Magazine and Mujer Emprendre.
She also had the great honor of being invited by her alma mater UCF in April 2026, to talk about her advocacy for women’s rights in the arts. Ambar and her team at Mills Gallery talked to the UCF students for two hours and shared their views about the art world and artists. The event was introduced by Representative Anna Eskamani, which showed the city’s support.
Ambar Santiago also recently curated her very first Exhibition titled “Opposites Attract”, in March 2026, featuring Liamel Cohen and Genna Sweetnam. The Exhibition received rave reviews and sold nine (9) pieces.
Ambar strongly believes, “If I can help one woman feel prepared enough to enter the art world, then I’m doing something right.”
This CityArts Exhibition is curated by Juan Pablo Santa Luna.
Title: “Guatemala: My Place Of Trees”
Where: CityArts, 37 S Magnolia Ave, Orlando, FL, in the SIDE Gallery upstairs.
When: Thursday, September 17th, 2026 from 6 - 9 p.m.
Cost: Free Admission!
All photos courtesy and copyright Ambar Santiago, published with permission