“When you look at my paintings, you’re encountering parts of my identity,” the artist Alvaro Barrington has said. “I grew up in a culture where it was really about erasing hierarchies, where we’re all participating in cultural production.” Barrington was born in 1983, in Caracas, Venezuela. His parents were migrant workers, his mother Grenadian and his father Haitian, and he was raised by a network of relatives between the Caribbean and Brooklyn, New York. His influences include Tupac Shakir, hip-hop, the Harlem Renaissance, and modernist pioneers like Paul Klee and Agnes Martin. These cultural languages come together in Barrington’s work with textiles and wood. In his Tate Britain installation, Barrington channels his grandmother’s home in the tropics, incorporating a protective corrugated-steel roof and three aluminum sculptures of dancing figures. It’s a spectacle. —Elena Clavarino
The Arts Intel Report
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
Alvaro Barrington: Grace
![](https://photos.airmail.news/8de51my47o4hfgyrw48r5ps0vh5i-bceda9d53d3b795f293d52be8810cb05.jpeg)
Alvaro Barrington, Grace, 2024.
When
Until Jan 6, 2025
Where
Etc
Photo © Tate/Seraphina Neville