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The first thing you’ll see when you step into the newly renovated Lexington Market is an imposing collage of photos shot by Baltimore native and artist SHAN Wallace. If you’re familiar with Wallace’s photography — which has graced the pages of The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post and more — some of the images that find themselves in this amalgamation of moments around the market may look familiar. That’s because the mural is comprised of photos that she’s taken and shared over the years — mostly in Baltimore, but also in North Carolina, Cuba and Johannesburg, South Africa.
The collage beautifully crystalizes what Lexington Market used to feel like for people who frequented it before its new look. There are awnings for businesses that sell fresh produce, crab meat and burgers, to name a few. Vendors are carrying food, patrons are dancing while others rock matching outfits. Others are leaning onto the top floor’s railings, entertained by everything happening below.
There is an accuracy to the liveliness recreated here that only someone of Wallace’s Baltimore-bred experience could make. Seeing it evokes the nostalgic smells of fried food, steamed crabs, and breakfast platters. You can suddenly hear the constant chatter of people placing orders or running into old friends. In a lot of ways, Wallace, whom I have know for years, has created a mural that’s a guided travel back through time for Baltimoreans. Through our friendship and frequent collaborations, I’ve come to know her work intimately.
Where Wallace really amazes is how she managed to capture the market’s essence by piecing together moments that she’s documented. Like many, she grew up going to the market regularly in her childhood, mostly with her late mother. “I would get pretzels, she would get flavored water. She would get corned beef sandwiches. I would get western fries,” is how she remembered their bonding over their food selections in a recent WBAL interview. She said much of the mural is an extension of her exhibition titled The Avenue, which featured a great deal of her photography around Lexington Market and occupied space at The Baltimore Museum of Art in 2020.
“Some of the figures I had already made. And then often, too, it is intuitive,” Wallace said while looking up at the mural. “It’s like, what goes together? What kind of stands out? What fits? Because it’s like I’m building the figures. Sometimes certain arms don’t work on certain bodies and certain hands don’t really look right. This body here [pointing up] is Mr. Wiggles. That’s actually Mr. Wiggles in the back, whose body is turned towards us. But this is also his body here playing the guitar.”
Music was one of the key components Wallace emphasized for creating the piece, especially since catching a vibe was one of the things that always kept her coming back to the market in adulthood. Mr. Wiggles, a beloved regular at Lexington Market who’d come every weekend to shake a leg, is featured, in one way or another, a few times here. Then there are the arms of local trumpeter Brandon Woody, who Wallace photographed for a Calvin Klein campaign that was advertised around the city last year. She pointed and explained: “It’s just thinking of trying to put the music part in here. And then a person that’s dancing here. And then you have the two people up there dancing. And then you have that person dancing too. And those people are actually dancing at the market.”
At every turn, you’re absorbing maybe five photos in one, so it’s paramount to take it all in carefully — which is the beauty of collage as a medium. “A lot of the process was observing and trying to just take in everything that’s happened, taking in the consumerism but also taking the community and taking the interactions people are having,” she said. “People are having a good time. Some people are asleep, some people are eating on their lunch break, some people are buying their groceries.”
Wallace’s mural is undoubtedly a love letter to Baltimore, but more specifically, to the Black Baltimore experience of which Lexington Market has been a crucial part. For all of its recent positive press, the area around Lexington Market — though it is in need of revitalization — has often been the subject of narrow-minded classist and racist takes from people looking to punch down on vulnerable folks. So as it improving the market becomes a priority for those involved in its renovation, Wallace’s work here is a tribute to everything it was up until this point — the place her mother would visit to grab a bite and to congregate with people she’d see there.
“Ultimately, I feel like I’m proud that everyone is feeling prideful about this and feeling like this represents the market that they know, because it was a lot of pressure. I think that they selected the perfect person,” Wallace reflected glowingly. “I want people to see this and feel that this represents the market that we know. The people, the signs, just the culture of the market. And I feel really proud that I was able to fucking pull this off, because it’s been a lot, a lot of work. This is a communal effort. I did a lot of the labor, but I wouldn’t have been able to do this without everyone else’s experiences and people sharing it with me and just the people who went to Lexington Market. I just wouldn’t be able to do this without the city.”
Lexington Market, where Wallace’s mural can be seen, opened for a soft launch earlier this week .
lawrence.burney@thebaltimorebanner.com
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Lawrence Burney was The Baltimore Banner’s arts & culture reporter. He was formerly a columnist at The Washington Post, senior editor at The FADER, and staff writer at VICE music vertical Noisey.
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