CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/15/2025

Honoring Hispanic & Latin American Heritage Month

Sans-Souci (This threshold between a dematerialized and a historicized body) (2015) is reproduced from the gorgeous yet scholarly exhibition catalog Firelei Báez, a staff pick in honor of Hispanic & Latin American Heritage Month, running September 15–October 15, 2025. Partly inspired by the artist’s sketch book, this 200–page hardcover features a lush plate section with reproductions not only of Báez’s deeply penetrating paintings and her haunting, submersive installation, but also preparatory sketches published alongside annotations, source images and close-up details of the artworks. “Báez’s discursive work starts in research and is completed through solitary hours,” Eva Respini writes, “often in the dead of night, spent painting in the studio. Beauty is central to her endeavors, and she excels at both abstraction and figuration. Time in Báez’s work slips between past, present and future. She draws freely, and variously, from anthropology, geography, folklore, fantasy, science fiction, social history, and pop culture to unsettle categories of race, gender and nationality.”