Alvaro Barrington (b. 1983, Venezuela) was raised by a network of relatives in Brooklyn, New York, and the Caribbean. His diverse practice is informed by an uncompromising dedication to the community. Barrington views himself as a painter first and foremost, but he has collaborated in exhibitions, concerts, performances, fashion, charities, and contributions to the London Notting Hill Carnival. Similar to this, he uses unconventional mediums and methods, like burlap, concrete, cardboard, and sewing, in his paintings. He also incorporates allusions to his own and his culture's past.

Barrington, who incorporates a wide range of aesthetic and cultural allusions in his work, believes that influence and communication are essential. Rapper Tupac Shakur and the hip-hop scene of the 1990s, jazz and the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, Marcus Garvey, the political activist from Jamaica, modernist luminaries like Willem de Kooning, Paul Klee, Agnes Martin, and Louise Bourgeois, and his peers in the art world are some of his personal touchstones. By combining real things like rugs, steel drums, brooms, and fans into the image plane, he alludes to Robert Rauschenberg's breakthrough Combines with his firmly interdisciplinary approach. This artist never stops adding new communities, references, and sources of inspiration to his repertoire, all the while appreciating how important art history has been to his development as a practitioner.

Painting, for Barrington, is an exploration of the role of the medium in the great heritage of storytelling, as well as a means of experiencing the world we live in. His previous shows have looked at issues like conception and migration, Black community goals, mass incarceration, time concepts, and digital identities in remote settings. For him, it is imperative that people have access to accessible locations where they may experience art. One such place is Carnival, which he regards as his first completely realized creative encounter. When his debut One Famalay event brought Soca singers like Machel Montano, Skinny Fabulous, and others to London in 2019, he started working with Notting Hill Carnival. Queen of the Caribbean, the official Notting Hill Carnival concert, was produced by him in 2022.

After completing his studies at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and Hunter College in New York, Barrington went on to teach at the Cooper Union in New York in addition to his former institutions. In 2017, MoMA PS1, Queens had his first solo exhibition, which was organized by Klaus Biesenbach and debuted the year he graduated. Since then, he has had numerous solo and group exhibitions of his work, including Thaddaeus Ropac, London (2018); Alvaro Barrington: SPIDER THE PIG, PIG THE SPIDER, South London Gallery, London (2021); Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London (2021); and through his ongoing Tt x AB collaboration with the painter Teresa Farrell. Barrington co-curated the 2019 Thaddaeus Ropac, London exhibition Artists I Steal From with Julia Peyton-Jones. He then held solo gallery exhibits in Salzburg (2022) and Paris Marais (2021).