MASSIMODECARLO is delighted to present MY MAMA TOLD ME YOU WAS A PROBLEM, BITCH, the second solo exhibition by London-based artist Alvaro Barrington in Milan.

Barrington explores the layers of Black identity, simultaneously confronting the challenges of hypervisibility and social invisibility. His practice, informed by his multilayered relationship with America, race, and class, is a continuous act of reimagining. In a nod to Arte Povera, Barrington transforms unconventional materials – concrete into canvas, rope into backdrop, and milk crates into stained glass – creating a personal American narrative.

The title My Mama Told Me You Was a Problem Bitch captures the energy of 90s rap, a genre that reshaped cultural narratives with its sharp wit, raw emotion, and unapologetic commentary on life. Inspired by the rhythm of five iconic tracks – Biggie’s Mo Money Mo Problems, Jay-Z’s 99 Problems, Nas’s Life’s a Bitch, Tupac’s Wonder Why They Call U Bitch, and LL Cool J’s Mama Said Knock You Out – Barrington stitches together a homage to a time when beats and biting truths formed a communal anthem for self-expression.

The exhibition brings together three distinct bodies of work, each engaging with the conditions of Black life through Barrington’s characteristic use of unusual materials. Jute rope, concrete, denim, and milk crates – materials tied to labour, mobility, and survival – become central to his reimagining of an American landscape.

His jute rope works evoke the vastness of American landscapes while hinting at the haunting legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. Arranged in horizontal and vertical compositions, they gesture toward the structure of a landscape painting, layering histories of migration and displacement. Concrete slabs framed in denim – a fabric emblematic of the American working class – are overlaid with delicate pencil sketches of pigeons, bulls, and bucks. These recurring motifs carry diverse meanings: pigeons, omnipresent yet overlooked, mirror the resilience of working-class lives, while bulls and bucks nod to basketball’s centrality in Black culture, embodying strength, aspiration, and cultural pride. The pencil drawings, fragile to the point of near-erasure against the coarse concrete, were inspired by Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), a pivotal novel exploring visibility and invisibility. In the book, the unnamed Black protagonist faces racism through social invisibility, humiliation and injustice. The drawings, too, seem to vanish from certain angles, mirroring the fragile and shifting nature of identity in Ellison’s narrative.