At Essex Art Center, Rixy Brings the Glamour and Grit of the Streets Indoors

Growing up in a place like Lynn, MA, I’m used to hearing all kinds of opinions about where I come from. There are countless ideas surrounding the “kind of people” who live in a city with a high-minority population. And while the roughness might be what makes the news, there is an innate beauty that persists between the margins. “There’s Glitter in the Concrete,” a continuation of Rixy’s Cúcala series, now on view at Essex Art Center, positions this beauty at the forefront of her solo exhibition. In fifteen pieces ranging from sculptures and installations to paintings, Rixy brings the streets of places like Lynn, Roxbury, and Lawrence into a fine arts space. Rixy is best known for her murals that often depict women with joyful, narrative-based imagery meant to resonate with and reflect the communities that they live in. These larger-than-life women are often situated among multicolored plants, sometimes accompanied by animals or morphing into them, and usually adorned by jewels. Whereas her murals are celebrations of collective neighborhoods and their stories, “There’s Glitter in the Concrete” is reflexive and gives insight into Rixy’s upbringing and family ties. In her vulnerability, Rixy’s creations serve as a mirror, reflecting back the experience of many Afro Latines living in places like Lawrence and Lynn.

The exhibition, lit with warm purple and pink spotlights, transports me into the world of Cúcala—a place that is familiar to me but is something of a subversion of my reality. Created by Rixy, the Cúcala is a surreal realm that has the vibe of a club/jungle crossover while simultaneously sustaining the promise of a socially equitable future. Inside the gallery, Rixy has turned her eye to men in order to challenge traditional depictions of masculinity. Here, her characters are rendered on cardboard, car tires, scraps of wood—things you might find on the streets. But they are also adorned with faux fur, glitter, chains, colorful liquor bottles—things you might find at a party.

The atmosphere of the space pairs well with the tropical color palette of pieces like Too Fast and Too Furious—a painting of a rich-skinned man adorned in gold jewelry and a fly fit leaning against his modded-out lime-green Mitsubishi with sparkling rims (rims we can assume he just finished polishing judging by the cloth in his hand). Written on the car is “¡KLK!”, a Dominican phrase that translates to “Wassup!” This piece is wholly reminiscent of punto, street car meets that happen on late summer nights, where blasting dembow out of chucheros is a form of flexing. The piece is painted on a plátano box, the perfect homage to Dominican culture—a culture that is vibrant, energetic, and flashy. Too Fast and Too Furious is a snapshot of the prevalent nightlife and everything that comes with it—street racing, keeping your possessions in pristine condition, and looking good. Flashy jewelry, cornrowed hair, rich skin, and tattoos—things that serve as identity builders, forms of creative self-expression, and signifiers of social status can become bullseyes on their backs. Those same identity builders can double as a form of confirmation bias to those outside of their circles—a means to perpetuating harmful stereotypes. The men who participate in parading their prized possessions on the freeway may also be reduced to being troublemakers—easily identified by the glamour and swag that they carry.

Them Rowdyruff Boyz paints a trinity of clean, fashionable, handsome men who, despite their glamour, have a roughness to them—perhaps a callused exterior built from being exposed to harshness. As if embedded into the world in which they exist, dollar bills and scratch tickets adorn the top right of the long wooden panel upon which the painting is depicted, suggesting the scars they’ve accumulated along the way have been in pursuit of having money in their pockets—a necessity for survival. Survival is the name of the game for those of us who’ve been subjected to the harshness of a world that opposes your existence, but as in Tupac’s poem The Rose That Grew from Concrete, we see that despite lacking necessities in life, there is still a chance for growth, beauty, and prosperity. Rixy’s illustrations of the reality of urban existence capture the nuances of having to fight to survive, and thrive, by any means—regardless of whether we’re sprouting from soil or from concrete.

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“There’s Glitter in the Concrete” is on view at Essex Art Center, 56 Island Street, Lawrence, MA, through December 21, 2024.