Firelei Baez

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.

In her monumental paintings and installations, the Dominican American artist Firelei Báez (born 1981) creates images bursting with symbols from folktales, colonial occupation, legendary creatures and revolutions. She paints images on top of maps, book pages and found ephemera that combine abstraction and figuration, personal perspectives with grand historical narratives and Caribbean mythology with science fiction. This colorful publication serves as an introduction to Báez’s work. The artist discusses how she interrogates powerful concepts such as truth and history throughout her practice. Special attention is paid to her “palimpsests,” paintings on top of colonial maps or construction plans for colonial architecture, both of which represent the establishment’s notion of objectivity. Inspired by Báez’s works, poet Warsan Shire and author Katrine Rasmussen Kielsen contribute texts considering the legacy of colonialism.

This is the first monograph to collect the complete works to date of New York–based multimedia artist Firelei Báez (born 1981), fully illustrated with images of her immersive installations, sculptural commissions, paintings and more than 150 works on paper. Major new texts explore the artist’s biography, symbolism and the historical foundations of her works, from curator Mark Godfrey, MCA Chicago curator Carla Acevedo-Yates, ICA Boston curator Eva Respini and an in-depth conversation with Studio Museum Director Thelma Golden.
Bringing together more than 10 years of exhibitions and installations, from her acclaimed 2016 exhibition at the Perez Art Museum Miami to her 2021 commission for the ICA Boston, Firelei Báez: to breathe full and free is a landmark presentation of the work of this exciting emerging artist.