'Enter the Cúcala'
Solo Exhibition
at Trustman Gallery
​presented by Simmons University

April 4 - May 13

​Opening Reception:
Thursday, April 7, from 5 – 8 PM
Artist Talk:
Thursday, May 5, from 6 – 7 PM

"Simmons University presents Enter the Cúcala, featuring paintings and mixed media assemblages created over the past two years by Rixy. This series investigates Rixy’s personal Caribbean Latinidad experiences and explores a world inhabited by her cast of strong, vivacious and daring femme characters.  
Painted with a variety of media, these works seek to liberate Rixy’s characters from Machismento’s toxicity and recontextualize them in an environment of shifting power dynamics. Each femme character and creature, carefully and lovingly rendered in bright, dazzling colors, exudes sensual awareness. Depicted on found materials like packaging cardboard imbued with the sense-memory of previously contained objects, Rixy’s characters take on an additional dimension of meaning, in line with the artist’s emphasis on communal practice and storytelling.  Rixy grounds her work with a sense of site-specificity through hand-painted designs on the gallery’s walls, as well as strings, chains and braids that act as physical connections between her artwork and the space, bringing her dynamic, colorful world into our reality."

from Helen Popinchalk, curator of Trustman Gallery at Simmons University