Image Credit: Gabriela Román González, Curator, photographed by James Baines.

From the backstage wings of Havana’s Karl Marx Theatre to the galleries, performance spaces and conversations shaping London’s cultural landscape, Gabriela Román González has built a career asking not just what art can do, but how it brings people together. Growing up surrounded by rehearsals, lighting rigs and the organised chaos of live performance, she discovered an early fascination with the transformation of ideas into shared experience – a curiosity that continues to define her work today. Now Curator at CASA and a Trustee of the Live Art Development Agency, Gabriela is part of a new generation of cultural leaders who see curating as an act of care, collaboration and social imagination.

We’re speaking with Gabriela as CASA’s ambitious Lines of Flight programme returns to Brixton House with Systems in Question – a compelling day of live performance, exhibition and critical conversation exploring the visible and invisible systems that shape our everyday lives. Rather than offering easy answers, Gabriela creates spaces where artists and audiences can sit with complexity, question assumptions and discover new ways of seeing the world.

That ethos runs throughout our conversation, from immigration and identity to institutional power, artistic responsibility and the value of slowing down long enough for meaningful relationships to grow. Along the way, Gabriela also shares the London neighbourhoods that continue to inspire her – Dalston (for Café OTO and dancing around Ridley Road Market), Brixton (for Brixton Village and its rich mix of communities), and Peckham (for Frank’s and John the Unicorn, where an unplanned day is often the best kind).

Immerse yourself in Lines of Flight. Experience Systems in Question on 4 July, then follow the programme as it unfolds through the autumn at Brixton House. Some of the most rewarding cultural experiences don’t offer certainty – they invite us to stay curious.

You grew up in Cuba before building your career in London. Looking back, what were the formative experiences, people or moments that first made you realise culture could be a way of understanding the world – and perhaps even changing it?

One of my earliest memories is of spending time backstage at the Karl Marx Theatre in Havana, where my dad has worked as a producer for most of his life. It’s one of Cuba’s main cultural venues, which have hosted many, from the Royal Ballet and Rick Wakeman to some of the most celebrated Cuban and Latin American artists.

I remember walking onto the empty stage before a concert or a performance, with people rehearsing, adjusting the lights, and conversations happening everywhere. I was amazed by that kind of chaos, where everything existed in fragments because everyone was slowly falling into sync. Since then I find something deeply fulfilling about that transformation from chaos into meaning.

I don’t know if those early experiences made me think culture could change the world. But they did make me realise it could change the way people experience the world, even if only for a moment. I’ve been curious about how those moments come into being ever since, and I think that’s still what draws me to curating today.

Image Credit: ‘The Hollow Men’ by Polo Farrera.

You’ve spoken about being interested in creating “conditions” for artists and audiences rather than simply programming events. What does that mean in practice? What have you learned about bringing people together in ways that allow genuinely new conversations, relationships and ideas to emerge?

For me my work is as much about human relationships and caring for people’s needs as it is about the cultural proposals themselves. The people I’m thinking about are usually the artists and creatives, the team I’m working with, and the audience. All of them deserve the time to think things through, negotiate, and explore the conditions that allow us to come together. I pay a lot of attention to those processes.

One of the reasons I wanted Lines of Flight to unfold over a year was because I wanted those relationships, and the ideas and conversations we wanted to happen to have time to mature, instead of constantly reacting to the next deadline. The negotiations, compromises, responsibilities and dependencies that rarely become visible but shape what is possible when programming events, need time to settle.

The title Systems in Question invites us to look closely at the structures that organise our lives. What was the spark behind this programme, and why do you think artists are uniquely placed to examine the contradictions, failures and dependencies that often remain hidden in plain sight?

I had a series of experiences that slowly started speaking to each other. Over the past year, I found myself navigating the uncertainty of my own immigration status in the UK after seven years of building a life in this country, watching questionable political decisions impact people’s lives almost overnight, and working through the everyday realities of producing cultural proposals within an arts organisation of CASA scale. They seemed like very different situations, but they were all making me ask similar questions about the systems we move through every day, often without noticing them until they begin to limit us.

Systems in Question became a way of thinking through those realities with others, through art, because it was not difficult to spot this was a theme that many people were wanting to address. As for the second part of your question, I think art, and cultural experiences – which are shaped by many, not just artists – have a persuasive power that other forms of communication often don’t. They can distort perception, and open up complex questions with a lightness and generosity that other languages sometimes struggle to achieve.

Image Credit: ‘The Hollow Men’ by Polo Farrera.

One of the programme’s centrepieces, Polo Farrera’s The Hollow Men, confronts the disappearance of his father and the failures of institutional accountability. How do you navigate presenting work that deals with such political and personal realities while also creating space for reflection, dialogue and care?

Since we started to work with Polo, I was very aware that this wasn’t simply a project about a difficult subject. It was something he was still living through.That meant thinking carefully about the kind of process we were creating around him as much as the work itself. The design of the residency made this easier because it was created to offer him time and space for testing.

The conversations, the people involved in the development (other artists, institutions), the pace of the residency, even reminding ourselves that this doesn’t need to become a finished statement yet, all of those things are ways to create space for reflection and care and it also shapes how the work is developed in its more honest form.

Image Credit: ‘View / Restrictive View’ by Ilê Sartuzi.

CASA has become an important platform for artists from Latin America, the Caribbean and their diasporas. Beyond questions of representation, what conversations or perspectives do you feel these artists are bringing into the UK cultural landscape that are particularly important right now?

What I do notice across many of the artists we work with is a way of moving through the world that feels deeply relational and rarely linear. Their work often shifts between different geographies, histories and ways of knowing without feeling the need to resolve those tensions quickly. You see it in Polo Farrera’s ability to begin with a deeply personal family story and open up broader reflections on state violence; questions that, in different forms, you can also find here in the UK. Or in INDEPENDENCE, a project I’m currently developing with Débora Delmar and Ilê Sartuzi, which reflects on how autonomy is claimed and exercised through legal infrastructures established by states, but also within the context of cultural production. I think those perspectives are particularly valuable right now because they remind us that there is rarely just one way of understanding the present, and that some of the most interesting conversations emerge when we’re willing to sit with different realities at once.

Image Credit: ‘TRUST’ by Débora Delmar (courtesy of Stanley Picker Gallery).

You’ve spent much of your career building opportunities for others. When you think about the next decade, what gives you optimism about the future of the arts?

I’ve actually been thinking about this recently because of something completely outside my work. I’ve been listening to artists like Milo J and CHUWI, and reading about what Kane Parsons has done at such a young age with the film Backroom, and what was got me was the feeling that there is a new generation less concerned with fitting into an established idea of what culture should look like, and more interested in making work from a place that feels true to who they are and the world they’re living in. I find that incredibly hopeful.

London is full of creative energy, but everyone has their own cultural map of the city. Outside of CASA and Brixton House, what are three cultural places, spaces or communities in London that you return to time and again – and what makes them special to you?

That’s a difficult one because my map of London is always changing. I’d probably go with neighbourhoods rather than venues, as I like wandering around and moving from one place to another. I’d probably say Dalston, Brixton and Peckham. Dalston always feels full of music, and I particularly love Café OTO and ending up dancing around Ridley Road Market. Brixton because I love the food around Brixton Village Market, and how many different communities cross paths there. And then Peckham, I love Frank’s, and John the Unicorn. I like that you can spend a whole day there without feeling like you need much of a plan.

Find Gabriela Román González at casafestival.org.uk and on Insta @gabriela_rglez

Find CASA ON Insta @casafestival_

Systems in Question: Live Programme
Saturday 4 July
Brixton House
385 Coldharbour Lane
London SW9 8GL

17:00-18:30
The Hollow Men – Live Performance by Polo Farrera → casafestival.org.uk

18:00 – 21:00
Débora Delmar and Ilê Sartuzi – Exhibition Opening → casafestival.org.uk

19:00 – 21:00
Conversations and drinks