We were lucky to catch up with Rixy Fernandez recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Rixy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
My practice is centered around projects that stylize fantastical stories and global beauty from my Latinx Caribbean culture and the communal diaspora. From large scale murals, immersive installations, and florescent sculptures, the works are intended to empower our presence, typically through femme divinity, to inspire the manifestation of our social equity. To create assemblage paintings, like a recent installation “The Babyfish Lounge” an upcycled ‘club’ that hosts secrets of alternative voices inspired by caribbean architecture, and building my storyworld “Cúcala” for these projects and characters, are invitations for folx to find inclusivity in new world experiences. An intention I bring to foster access for beings and their path to surreal resistance.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am Rixy. Born in Roxbury, MA, with blood from native parts of Dominican Republic and Honduras. Through the migration of my families, I was often connected to accessible forms of art like Cartoons, Graffiti, and Industrial Designs, that engulf our communities. These became big strings in my discipline and how I intended to share with the cultures that raised me. Where my practice developed is typically through these hands on creations, but also, Education, Public Programming, and Mentorship. In ways, I see a map of explorations and knowledge where I can bridge the gap to the hoods that deserve the resources and equity. By living in between these streets I can further develop plans of decolonizing systems and aid in social reform with creative solutions that are site specific and flexible to a clients’ needs, prioritizing the needs of my people, to collaborate on the coexistence of our stories, and build inclusive spaces. The style and raw flow of how I approach these projects, are what makes me Rixy, including the passion I’ve cultivated as I travel around the world and acknowledge how so many subcultures are related through similar strings – a pillar in being a muralist / street artist of any sort, is the immersion of our perspectives to new spaces. Through my personal practice in spirituality, research, advocacy, style and love, makes me most proud in the work I do, hopefully detached from the far mindset of humanly capital that tends to blur our purpose in art making. When I get the chance to exchange with others, I most aim for us to gain new perspective and acceptance of the other’s background, knowing that work is fueled by joy and vibrancy for them and our biggest dreams. My excitement leads my work ethic, and the heart I have for experiences that allow me to shed and be a new version of myself and artist. The visuals, all sparkling, sensual, surreal and spatial, are direct reflections of the bold characteristics of the folx involved in every face.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
In my biggest dreams, I saw me traveling the world exchanging experiences, knowledge, and culture via my art making and gifting my perspective of the beauties I’ve discovered. The most rewarding part is going to distant places to bridge conversations amongst people, and getting to depict bright bold women and stories because of the love they’d energized me with along these times. Although my work is expanding beyond any one characteristic, into conceptual conversations, feelings, and design, I see my work as a reflection of my explorations, as a realization of being an extension of a Creator, a Magician, a Mad Scientist, and supporting the awakening of our perspectives. I didn’t imagine that my work would help unlock so many doors for others, as much as it has been a tool in helping my own health and spiritual mind. The best gift is healing that my work invites and dreams it can inspire.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
Society could best support creatives, by detaching a sense of control, and instilling more trust for the freedom of the artists’ conversations. Be it controversial or specific, if we better support the minds of artists, we would further evolve our world to find creative solutions that will empower inclusivity for so many “alternative” or silenced voices that are asking for equality and acceptance. We can do this by inviting artists and having larger conversations that are paced to collaborate in intentional ways, versus utilizing artists as a tool, decoration, or accessory to a company’s brand that ultimately reduce artists to a computation, and not giving the time to allow their human creativity to flourish. To often, artists are used very directly, without enough consideration of the mental, emotional, physicial, and spiritual energy it takes, and we could be doing more to see the artists as healers or sheperds of our societies, and not a strung along entity. It would then inspire many more people to be artists in their respective lands, and provide stability to the growing injustices and captialism that are not helping people of certain “classes” or races. Other examples can include allowing artists in more rooms of development so they have a say in solution based projects, allowing artists to have more flow in research and production, and funding creative voices of all backgrounds so investors and organizations have the opportunity to learn and unlearn in their own lanes.
Contact Info:
- Website: rixyfz.com
- Instagram: @rixyxir