Lowriders Cruise Onto the National Stage In Smithsonian Exhibition

Lowriders — American-made muscle cars customized with chrome plates, glossy paint and pristine rims — comprise an art form that neatly represents the ideals of this country.

The cars are products of engineering and ingenuity, as well as community and culture. With candy paint and gold rims, the mobile masterpieces come from a long tradition that’s been stigmatized and even criminalized.

Now, lowriding culture is being celebrated on the highest national level.

On Friday, Sept. 26, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. will open the exhibition Corazón y vida, honoring more than 80 years of lowriding culture.

The exhibition includes photographs from artists like Lou Dematteis and posters from the Royal Chicano Air Force. Artifacts such as plaques, jackets, a tool box and a “No Cruising” sign from Sacramento help fill in important context.

And of course, there’s the legendary vehicles. Those include “El Rey,” Albert de Alba, Sr.’s 1963 cherry-and-sherbet-colored Chevrolet Impala, and “Gypsy Rose,” a 1964 Chevrolet Impala hand-painted with a floral design by the late Jesse Valadez Sr..

“Yes, the car is the star,” exhibition curator Steve Velasquez tells me in a recent phone interview. “But it takes a community to build it. It takes a community to show it. It takes the community to really appreciate it.”

That community of lowrider lovers that Velasquez references is largely Latino. As the federal government makes it a point to accost, harass and deport immigrants — specifically Latino people — without due process, Corazón y vida comes at an interesting time, to say the least.

Add to that this administration’s meddling into the Smithsonian, an institution under threat of a “comprehensive internal review” to weed out “improper ideology” and “divisive narratives.”

The exhibition has been in the works since the end of Trump’s first term, but it comes at the right time, says Velasquez, adding that it’s “the right thing to do” regardless of who’s in power.

Long before the current administration, lowriding and the culture from which it emerged faced harsh critiques, over-policing and biased legislation.

In January of last year, California’s Assembly Bill 436 took effect, ending a more than 25-year ban on “cruising zones” throughout the state. And while changing laws is a major accomplishment, changing people’s minds is a separate hurdle.

“It’s taken a lot of work, from a lot of people, to change the perception of lowriding as criminal and to make it more of an expression of culture,” says Velasquez.

Many car clubs serve the community by volunteering at hospitals, speaking to the incarcerated and organizing food drives, Velasquez says. Along with hanging fuzzy dice on the rear-view and installing hydraulics to make their cars hop, lowrider groups for years have filled the gaps created by a lack of city services and other social institutions.

Dueñas, an all-women, intergenerational collective from the South Bay led by Angel Romero, exemplifies the changing perception of lowriders.

Since their founding more than five years ago, the collective has turned heads at car shows, organized holiday toy drives for kids and performed philanthropic work throughout the South Bay.

Now, an image of Dueñas will be included in the Smithsonian exhibition.

“I never thought that lowriding, in general, would be this widely accepted,” says Romero. “Especially in times like this, where we’re facing a lot of different things going on in our communities.”

Those “different things” include a widespread federal crackdown on immigration, which sharply increased after Trump’s spending bill, approved in July, dedicated a staggering $75 billion to ICE enforcement over the next four years.

“To see our culture and our history highlighted in the Smithsonian,” Romero says, “it shows that no matter what, we will always be here.”

The image of Romero’s car club included in the Smithsonian exhibit was created by Northern California-based photographer Renée Lopez.

When Lopez got final confirmation of the exhibition, she printed the image and hand-delivered it to the car club members. “I was like, ‘Hey, by the way, y’all are about to be in Smithsonian,’” Lopez says. “We all cried, it was amazing.”

A photographer who’s spent the past six years documenting lowrider culture, specifically the women in the scene, Lopez says the inclusion in the exhibit is a huge honor, and something that she’s still trying to wrap her head around.

“I don’t get paid,” she says about her cultural documentation, “I do it out of love.”

Lopez’s mission to center women in lowriding underscores a significant shift within the culture. “We were really only allowed to be passengers,” Lopez says, in reference to older ways of thinking. “Now,” she says, “women have money to buy their own cars, they’re building their own cars and painting their own cars.” Two years ago, for the first time, she saw a woman compete in a hop contest.

“This is what I’ve been working for, to push the culture forward,” says Lopez. “For it to be at this time, with what’s happening in this country right now, it is so special. I can’t even explain it.”

Lopez, who is currently working on a documentary about women in lowriding, plans to make the trip to the nation’s capitol for this weekend’s opening.

“Lowriding has been happening for a long time, and it’s always about resistance and resilience, right?” she says.

“For it to be shown right now, I feel like the timing couldn’t have been better.”

‘Corazón y vida’ opens Friday, Sept. 26, at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. Details and more information here. The touring exhibition visits three cities in California: Anaheim, Port Hueneme and Fresno.