Firelei Báez

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Firelei Báez, “Untitled (Temple of Time),” 2020

oil, acrylic and inkjet on canvas (Wilks Family Collection) (Courtesy the Artist and Hauser & Wirth, New York) (Photo: Phoebe d’Heurle) (© Firelei Báez)

My works are propositions, meant to create alternate pasts and potential futures, questioning history and culture in order to provide a space for reassessing the present.

—Firelei Báez

Organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, this exhibition is the first mid-career survey of the richly layered work of Firelei Báez.

One of the most exciting painters of her generation, Báez delves into the historical narratives of the Atlantic Basin. Over the past fifteen years, she has made work that explores the multilayered explorations of the legacy of colonial histories and the African diaspora in the Caribbean and beyond. 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, decoration and saturated colour, often overlaid on maps made during colonial rule in the Americas. Báez’s investment in the medium of painting and its capacity for storytelling and mythmaking informs all her work, including her sculptural installations, which bring this quality into three dimensions.

This exhibition offers audiences a timely opportunity to gain a holistic understanding of Báez’s complex and profoundly moving body of work, cementing her as one of the most important artists of the early 21st century.