BCNARTS: Rose B. Simpsons Lexicon Lowriders At The De Young Question American Car Culture

Rose B. Simpson’s new show, “Lexicon” — the first solo exhibition of a contemporary Native American artist at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, on view through February 2027 — includes a massive Southwestern sun mural in terracotta, teal, black and white that spans the top quadrant of one wall and sides in the main hall. Beneath it are two lowrider “show cars” — one white, and one black with a black lowrider bicycle standing upright in its trunk.

Detailed with Tewa pottery patterns, the lowriders face away from one another, hoods gleaming, a swirl of reflections from the overhead mural. By situating the cars within a museum that platforms global, cultural artefacts and art from as far back as the 17th century, Simpson, of Kha’p’oe wngeh/Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, cleverly connects modern day technologies to ancient time, highlighting the complex histories of automobiles along the way.

Indeed, the car — the American car, no less — has long been a sign of individual freedom. Cemented in American life since post-World War II, it espouses self-determination, expendable income and social fluidity that is itself predicated on a federal highway system connecting cities for the transport of goods and citizens.

That same vision of the “open road” was often compromised by racial discrimination. Countercultural movements sprang up as a result, including lowrider culture. Chicano communities in the Southwest and Southern California transformed classic cars through decorative paint jobs, custom upholstery, customized hydraulic systems designed to foil vehicle codes prohibiting low slung undercarriages, and specialized wheels, often built or rebuilt from discarded parts at little to no cost. Cars thus become mobile, individual works of art that celebrate a “bajito y suavecito” (low and slow/sweet) way of life.

Simpson’s installation builds on this form, yet the artist adds further nuance by applying traditional Tewa pottery techniques to each vehicle. “Maria” (2014) is a 1985 Chevy El Camino Simpson masterfully transformed with glossy black Tewa patterns on a flat black base color. The distinct patterning and color pay homage to the car’s namesake, Maria Po’ve’ka Montoya Martinez (Tewa, 1887-1980), a renowned potter who, with her husband Julian Martinez (Tewa, 1879-1943), created a new form of black-on-black pottery.

Despite a longstanding tradition of pueblo pottery, its daily use had fallen out of fashion at the time of Martinez’s birth, having been replaced by alternatives like Spanish tinware and Anglo enamelware. Yet Martinez developed her interest and craft in the pueblo tradition and eventually tried to recreate the finish on a prehistoric fragment of pottery found by an archeologist in 1909.

Instead of recreating the original polychrome technique, Martinez created a new method. She formed the vessels that her husband later painted, and their work rose to international prominence, illustrating, among other things that Native cultures did not simply belong in archeological museums for the past but were rather dynamic, innovative, and living.

The de Young Museum has an original Martinez work in its collection, originally purchased in 1939 at the Golden Gate Exposition on San Francisco’s Treasure Island. Simpson’s 2014 “Maria” represents another act of recovery and innovation.

The white two-door sedan “Bosque” (2024) is a repurposed 1964 Buick Riviera. The cream-colored body has black and black-and-red patterns that are similarly endemic to Tewa pottery motifs. The car’s underbelly is a deep, brick-red, matching its lush upholstered and patterned interior.

The cars’ windows are down, as though one might at any point climb in and take a tour of the museum. Bosque’s namesake might rather be a cottonwood forest along the Rio Grande — a unique, lush habitat that supports nearly 500 different species of animals in an otherwise arid environment. Cottonwoods have been growing in the region for over a million years.They depend on the river’s reliable water supply which is understandably under threat as a result of climate change. By naming this car after the Spanish word for forest, which in turn refers to a distinctly unique habitat, Simpson amplifies the tension between the car’s individualistic, petroleum-fueled freedom and the communal ecological environment that same vision exhausts.

In “Lexicon,” the myth of open road expansionism is troubled by lowrider countercultures, the revitalization of ancient traditions in the face of cultural genocide, and the precarity of our diminishing environment. Particularly when the current U.S. government attempts to recenter the petrodollar abroad through attacks in Venezuela and Iran, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement policies seek to violently reduce conceptions of national identity, “Lexicon” provides an astute portrait of American history and identity, capturing as the nation’s lineages, violences, visons and resilience, while asking where we go from here.

In connection with “Lexicon,” the de Young hosts a Lowrider Culture Celebration from noon for 4 p.m. on June 6.

“Lexicon” continues through Feb. 7, 2027 at the de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, San Francisco. Admission is $11 for students; $17 for seniors; $20 general; free for ages 17 and under. Visit famsf.org.

Caroline Picard is a writer, cartoonist and publisher based in the Bay Area. Find more about her at https://cocopicard.com.

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