Ambar Santiago

Ambar Santiago is a painter and illustrator based in Orlando whose work explores cultural identity, diaspora, and isolation as a third-generation American of Guatemalan descent. She graduated from the University of Central Florida with a BFA in Fine Arts and a Minor in Art History. She also serves as the Operations Administrator and an Emerging Curator at Mills Gallery. She recently received an award from Mujer Emprende/Nosotras Latinas as a “Woman Of Impact in the Arts – Rising Star” 

A great inspiration for her work came from Brazil’s “Antropofagia” Movement, started by modernist Oswald de Andrade and the painter Tarsila Do Amaral, who focused on making art through their roots and “cannibalizing” foreign cultures to ascertain one’s own. Santiago’s paintings feature highly stylized botanical scenes with dense, overgrown plants and palm trees rendered in vivid fluorescent colors. Her work functions as a visual exploration of self-identity, mapping the tension between longing for cultural belonging and the realities of being raised outside of it. 

See her work in person at CityArts on September 17th, 2026, in the Side Gallery.