Firelei Báez

“Her language for exploring [history] is at once serious and exuberant.” –Siddhartha Mitter, New York Times

Published with Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.

Over the last 15 years, Firelei Báez has created artwork that delves into the historical narratives of the Atlantic Basin. She draws on the disciplines of anthropology, geography, folklore, fantasy, science fiction and social history to unsettle categories of race, gender and nationality in her paintings, drawings and installations. Her exuberant paintings feature finely wrought, complex and layered uses of pattern, motifs and saturated hues. Primarily centering women of color, her works incorporate regal fashion styles and decorative elements as well as defiant gazes in order to assert their authority.
In advance of her North American traveling solo exhibition, this lushly illustrated book offers audiences an opportunity to gain a holistic understanding of Báez’s complex body of work, cementing her as one of today's most important artists. Partly inspired by artists’ sketchbooks, the monograph includes full-spread reproductions of the artist’s preparatory sketches alongside annotations, source images and close-up details of her artworks. Numerous scholars contribute thoughtful, reverent texts, weighing in on Báez’s indelible mark on the contemporary art landscape.
The Dominican Republic–born artist Firelei Báez (born 1981) reworks visual references drawn from diasporic histories in order to imagine new possibilities for the future, overlaying figuration, symbolic imagery and abstract gesture onto large-scale reproductions of found maps and documents. She then populates these representations with hybrid forms composed of folkloric and literary references, textile patterns and plant life.