One of artist Alvaro Barrington’s earliest memories is of living with his grandmother in Grenada, sheltering in the “little cabin in the countryside” where the rain pounded the tin roof and music played. Now this simple protective roof has inspired a massive minimalist sculpture (suspended corrugated metal sheets) that runs the length of Tate Britain’s soaring southern Duveen gallery.
We meet beneath him, midway through the installation of Grace, Barrington’s massive new three-part work for the prestigious annual Tate Britain Commission. Soon, he says, there will be a soundscape of rain and original music created by pioneering experimental artists, including Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes and Femi Adeyemi, founder of maverick London radio station NTS.
This is the first step in a journey that Barrington calls her “inner landscape,” shaped by her grandmother, sister figure, and mother, Frederica, Samantha, and Emelda, respectively. “I wanted to discover what I was doing [as an artist] about their efforts,” he says. “My mother got pregnant at 17 and my grandmother took me in without any judgement. My mother was living abroad, and when she returned, my grandmother found ways to show her that she was loved. He covered the chairs with plastic so the house never changed. He said: ‘No matter what, you have a home.’”
Barrington joined her mother in New York when she was eight and lived there until coming to London in her 30s to study at the Slade School of Fine Art. His rise since graduation in 2017 has been rapid by any standards. Although he describes himself as a painter, he is known for his wide-ranging projects that transcend the traditional boundaries of the medium.
History is migration and innovation: How do we find a land and call it home?
Alvaro Barrington
The first canvases encountered at Tate Britain are his signature thread paintings, in which threads are stitched onto the canvas to create sizzling explosions of colour. “These come from the women in my family who sew and crochet,” she says. “This was how they dealt with art: painting by putting fabrics together.”
In stark contrast to this evocation of domestic space, Duveen’s central dome explores women’s occupation of a very public stage. As we speak, an aluminum statue of a dancer dressed in “beautiful mas” with Brazilian carnival-inspired feathers and bikini costumes is being lowered into place by forklift.. It is based on “sister” Samantha, whom the artist has known for thirty years, dancing at the Notting Hill carnival. “There was a lot of talk about public space at art school [being dominated by] men,” he recalls. “Coming from the Caribbean didn’t make sense to me. “Millions of people attend the carnival, and if a woman dances alone, that’s her domain.”
The sculpture is a beacon of bodily freedom and kinship, rising between the security of the artist’s early childhood and his adolescent experiences in 1990s New York, sparking sobering reflections in the north gallery. Here, Barrington recalls the time when Rudy Giuliani oversaw a police department notorious for its brutal oppression of the Black community. He remembers how “high fives” between kids on the street could lead to gang membership charges and mass arrests. But she is exploring how this affects her mother and other parents.
While the artist celebrates belonging in other spaces, here he examines how people cope with being brutally detained. The focal point is a corner store kiosk built to the dimensions of an American prison cell. Its shutters open and close in a constant cycle of promise and rebuttal.
A striking stained glass work that shines in the archway above is based on a thread painting and looks back to her grandmother’s textile work and the domestic security she created. It is remarkable how Barrington channels the concept of home, a blend of family, community, and care, as a quasi-spiritual point of inspiration. “It brings my mother back to my grandmother, thanks to the work I put into my relationship with hers,” she says. “She is the matriarch who holds everything together.”
This aligns with Barrington’s other work, which explores art and her own formative journey as a complex web of connections between self, society, and culture. “My narrative of myself is as a working-class immigrant,” he says. “It allowed me to be an artist in different ways. The world’s history of migration and [its accompanying] innovation: how do we find land and then consider it our home? “This means that as a painter I can look at the entire global history of art.”
Alvaro Barrington: Grace at Tate Britain in London 26 January.
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This corner store and jail cell (above) addresses the neighborhood’s basic need as a place of community, but it’s also a danger. Barrington cites the death of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, shot in the back of the head by a Los Angeles corner store owner over a misunderstanding over a bottle of juice, as a dire alarm call, especially for her mother’s generation.
True to the collaborative spirit of carnival, this statue (above), which resembles the artist’s sister figure Samantha, is adorned with jewels, a ribboned costume and nail art. The statue is partly inspired by Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, but its broad commanding stance is far from the dignified object of Renaissance-era desire.
In the central domed area, a giant statue of a carnival dancer is surrounded by paintings of revelers (above). Barrington strung them on scaffolding, which visitors were supposed to wander around like it was a street party. The artist’s interest in social experience is very deep. His mother passed away when he was 10 years old. “When my mother died, a group of her friends took me in,” she says. “A collective community raised me. This way of thinking is ingrained in me.”
Barrington created the installation’s stunning stained glass works (above), calling on the workshop responsible for the windows in the Gaudí-designed Sagrada Familia Cathedral; including this work, where primary-coloured geometries evoke both quilt-making and the ethereal compositions of Mondrian.