
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Carte de l'Isle de Saint Domingue), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
68 x 86 in.
172.7 x 218.4 cm
JCG11255
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Olamina (How do we learn to love each other while we are embattled), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
86 3/8 x 114 1/2 in.
219.4 x 290.8 cm
JCG11940
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Black counter gravity (Carte figurative et approximative des quantités de coton en laine importés en Europe en 1858 et 1861), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
102 x 64 5/8 in.
259.1 x 164.1 cm
JCG11291
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Haitian Mermaid (Describing the West India Navigation, from Hudson's-Bay to the River Amazones), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
73 7/8 x 60 7/8 in.
187.5 x 154.5 cm
JCG11259
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Plate 36. Vertical and Latitudinal Distribution of Animal Life), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
89 1/4 x 106 3/4 in.
226.7 x 271.1 cm
JCG12093
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Fruta Fina, Fruta Estrańa (Lee Monument), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
88 1/4 x 111 in.
224.2 x 281.9 cm
JCG13967
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Les tables de geographie reduites en un jeu de cartes), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
82 3/8 x 105 3/4 in.
209.2 x 268.4 cm
JCG13203
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Routes of the famous flying Clipper ships), 2022
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
77 7/8 x 112 3/4 in.
197.8 x 286.2 cm
JCG13200
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Muzidi Calabi Yau Space (or a matter of navigation), 2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas, audio soundtrack composed by Tina Tallon and Rob Walker
98 1/4 x 482 1/8 in.
249.6 x 1224.52 cm
20 min 36 sec (looped)
JCG13488
Installation view, Firelei Báez, Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams, Venice, Italy, April 23 - November 27, 2022.
FIRELEI BÁEZ
To breathe full and free: a declaration, a re-visioning, a correction (19°36'16.9"N 72°13'07.0"W, 42° 21'48.762" N 71°1'59.628" W), 2021
Mixed media installation with sound
Acrylic, polystyrene foam, plywood, aluminum, rubber, perforated tarp, 32 audio tracks
19' 8" h x 75' l x 26' 9" w
48 min. 22 sec. (looped)
JCG12473
FIRELEI BÁEZ
To breathe full and free: a declaration, a re-visioning, a correction (19°36'16.9"N 72°13'07.0"W, 42° 21'48.762" N 71°1'59.628" W), 2021
Mixed media installation with sound
Acrylic, polystyrene foam, plywood, aluminum, rubber, perforated tarp, 32 audio tracks
19' 8" h x 75' l x 26' 9" w
48 min. 22 sec. (looped)
JCG12473
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Drexciya), 2020
Oil and acrylic on canvas
90 x 114 3/4 in
228.6 x 291.5 cm
JCG11393
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Tabula Anemographica seu Pyxis Navtic), 2021
Acrylic and oil on archival printed canvas
89 3/4 x 111 3/4 x 1 1/4 in.
228 x 283.8 x 3.2 cm
JCG11937
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Colonization in America, Visual History Wall Map, Prepared by Civic Education Service), 2021
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
108 7/8 x 83 1/4 x 1 1/2 in.
276.5 x 211.5 x 3.8 cm
JCG11939
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (A Map of the British Empire in America), 2021
Acrylic and oil on archival printed canvas
96 7/8 x 132 1/4 x 1 5/8 in.
245.9 x 335.8 x 4 cm
JCG11286
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (United States Marine Hospital), 2019
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
100 x 127 1/2 x 1 3/4 in.
254 x 323.9 x 4.4 cm
JCG11077
FIRELEI BÁEZ
On rest and resistance, Because we love you (to all those stolen from among us), 2020
Oil and acrylic on canvas
48 x 60 in.
121.9 x 152.4 cm
JCG11573
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Temple of Time), 2020
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
94 1/2 x 132 3/8 x 1 5/8 in.
240 x 336.2 x 4 cm
JCG11295
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (New Chart of the Windward Passages), 2020
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
66 x 86 1/4 in.
167.6 x 219.1 cm
JCG11256
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Slooshying the sluice of lovely sounds. Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh., 2020
Acrylgouache and acrylic polymer on Yupo paper
20 x 16 1/4 x 3/4 in
50.8 x 41.3 x 1.9 cm
JCG11773
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Unbound by the starless midnight, 2021
Acrylic and oil on canvas
40 x 30 1/4 x 2 1/2 in
101.6 x 76.8 x 6.3 cm
FIRELEI BÁEZ
the soft afternoon air as you hold us all in a single death (To breathe full and Free: a declaration, a re-visioning, a correction), 2021
Acryl-gouache and chine collé on archival printed paper
Dimensions variable
JCG11447
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Marine Hospital), 2021
Acrylic and oil on archival printed canvas
90 x 114 1/2 x 1 5/8 in.
228.6 x 290.8 x 4 cm
JCG11525
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Insularum Hispaniolae et Cubae), 2020
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
64 x 80 in.
162.6 x 203.2 cm
JCG11258
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Baubo), 2020
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
86 3/4 x 132 3/4 x 1 5/8 in.
220.3 x 337 x 4 cm
JCG11287
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Anacaona), 2020
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
96 3/8 x 127 3/8 in.
244.6 x 323.5 cm
JCG11257
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Flow of merchandise in France on railways and waterways in the year 1856), 2020
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
78 x 60 5/8 in.
198.1 x 154 cm
JCG11292
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Le Jeu du Monde), 2020
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
105 x 131 3/4 x 1 5/8 in.
266.7 x 334.5 x 4 cm
JCG11288
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Convex (recalibrating a blind spot), 2019
Acrylic and oil on archival printed canvas
96 7/8 x 124 5/8 in.
246.1 x 316.5 cm
JCG11032
FIRELEI BÁEZ
19.604692°N 72.218596°W, 2019
Site-specific commission, The High Line as a part of En Plein Air, April 2019 – March 2020
Photo by Timothy Schenck. Courtesy of The High Line.
FIRELEI BÁEZ
19.604692°N 72.218596°W, 2019
Site-specific commission, The High Line as a part of En Plein Air, April 2019 – March 2020
Photo by Timothy Schenck. Courtesy of The High Line.
FIRELEI BÁEZ
A Drexcyen chronocommons (To win the war you fought it sideways), 2019
Two paintings, hand-painted wooden frame, perforated tarp, printed mesh, handmade paper over found objects, plants, books, Oman incense, palo santo
373 1/4 x 447 x 157 in.
JCG10437
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Tignon for Ayda Weddo (or that which a center can not hold), 2019
Acrylic and oil on archival printed canvas
91 1/2 x 114 1/4 in.
JCG10459
FIRELEI BÁEZ
the trace, whether we are attending to it or not (a space for each other's breathing), 2019
Acrylic, oil, and transfer on archival printed canvas
90 x 114 3/8 in.
228.6 x 290.5 cm
JCG10455
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Untitled (Central Power Station), 2019
Acrylic and oil on archival printed canvas
96 7/8 x 124 5/8 in.
JCG10432
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Chrono-DREAMer, 2019
Acrylic and oil on archival printed canvas
72 x 48 in.
JCG10251
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Beauty as a practice (to see in discrete angles and blocks), 2019
Acrylic, oil, and transfer on archival printed canvas
89 x 114 3/8 in.
JCG10457
FIRELEI BÁEZ
An open horizon (or the stillness of a wound), 2019
Acrylic and oil on archival printed canvas
89 1/2 x 114 in.
JCG10458
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Je bâtis a roches mon langage, 2019
Perforated tarp, printed mesh, artificial and real plants; two paintings:
For Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité Bonheur (a reconstituted echo, to be spoken, complete), 2019, Acrylic and oil on canvas, frame
Errantry (a minor key that alters the structure of the major form within), 2019, Oil, acrylic, and gold foil on canvas
Installation view: Firelei Báez, new work, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, 27 January - 12 May 2019
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Je bâtis a roches mon langage, 2019
Perforated tarp, printed mesh, artificial and real plants; two paintings:
For Marie-Claire Heureuse Félicité Bonheur (a reconstituted echo, to be spoken, complete), 2019, Acrylic and oil on canvas, frame
Errantry (a minor key that alters the structure of the major form within), 2019, Oil, acrylic, and gold foil on canvas
Installation view: Firelei Báez, new work, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, 27 January - 12 May 2019
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Coqueta (history composed of ruptures), 2019
Arylic and oil on canvas
90 x 114 in.
JCG10294
FIRELEI BÁEZ
May 19, 2017, 6:05 p.m. (an idiom playing out its history), 2018
Oil, oil stick and graphite over canvas
92 x 120 in.
JCG10227
FIRELEI BÁEZ
For Améthyste and Athénaïre (Exiled Muses Beyond Jean Luc Nancy’s Canon), Anacaonas, 2018
Oil on canvas and wood panel, hand-painted frames
Installation view: The Modern Window: Firelei Báez, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2018-2019
Digital Image © 2018 The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Photographed by John Wronn
FIRELEI BÁEZ
For Améthyste and Athénaïre (Exiled Muses Beyond Jean Luc Nancy’s Canon), Anacaonas, 2018
Oil on canvas and wood panel, hand-painted frames
120 x 252 in.
Installation view: The Modern Window: Firelei Báez, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2018-2019
Photograph by Kurt Heumiller
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Ramo de Fuego (so the songs could speak), 2019
Oil on canvas
72 x 60 in.
JCG10252
FIRELEI BÁEZ
can you not see that we are implicated in its evolution?, 2017
Oil on canvas
84 x 60 in.
213.4 x 152.4 cm
JCG11395
FIRELEI BÁEZ
For Marie-Louise Coidavid, exiled, keeper of order, Anacaona, 2017
Oil on canvas
84 x 60 in.
213.4 x 152.4 cm
ZNI0337
Photo: Amy Pearman, Boyd Pearman Photography
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Man Without a Country (aka anthropophagist wading in the Artibonite River), 2014-15
Gouache, ink and chine-collé on 220 deaccessioned book pages
106 1/4 x 252 in.
Firelei Báez: Bloodlines, Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), FL, 15 October 2015 - 6 March 2016
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Man Without a Country (aka anthropophagist wading in the Artibonite River), 2014- 2015
Detail
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Ciguapa Antellana, me llamo sueño de la madrugada (who more sci-fi than us), 2018
Glass mosaic
Site-specific commission by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts & Design
Installation view, 163 St-Amsterdam Av Station, Washington Heights, New York, NY
Photo: Osheen Harruthoonyan.
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Ciguapa Antellana, me llamo sueño de la madrugada (who more sci-fi than us), 2018
Glass mosaic
Site-specific commission by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts & Design
Installation view, 163 St-Amsterdam Av Station, Washington Heights, New York, NY
Photo: Osheen Harruthoonyan.
FIRELEI BÁEZ
for Marie-Louise Coidavid, exiled, keeper of order, Anacaona, 2018
Oil on canvas
Installation view: 10th Berlin Biennale, Akademie der Künste (Hanseatenweg), Berlin, June 9 - September 9, 2018
Photo: Timo Ohler
FIRELEI BÁEZ
19° 36’ 16.89“ N, 72° 13’ 6.95“ W) / (52.4042° N, 13.0385° E, 2018
Acrylic, sheetrock, steel
Installation view: 10th Berlin Biennale, Akademie der Künste (Hanseatenweg), Berlin, June 9 - September 9, 2018
Photo: Timo Ohler
FIRELEI BÁEZ
19° 36’ 16.89“ N, 72° 13’ 6.95“ W) / (52.4042° N, 13.0385° E, 2018
Acrylic, sheetrock, steel
Installation view: 10th Berlin Biennale, Akademie der Künste (Hanseatenweg), Berlin, June 9 - September 9, 2018
Photo: Timo Ohler
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Given the ground ( the fact that it amazes me does not mean I relinquish it), An irreducible singularity (speaking to the space you fill and you keep), 2017
Acrylic and oil on canvas
Installation view: Future Generation Art Prize, 57th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, May 13 - September 26, 2017
FIRELEI BÁEZ
DREAMer (a demand for opacity that weaves no boundaries), 2017
Acrylic and oil on canvas
Installation view: Future Generation Art Prize, 57th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, May 13 - September 26, 2017
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Installation view: Firelei Báez: Bloodlines, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, February 17 – May 21, 2017
Photo: Abby Warhola
FIRELEI BÁEZ
A Fever, a daydream, 2017
Acrylic on canvas
40 x 64 in.
FIRELEI BÁEZ
To See Beyond Its Walls (and access the places that lie beyond), 2017
Installation view: Firelei Báez: To See Beyond Its Walls (and access the places that lie beyond), Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, August 2017 - June 2018
Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection
Museum purchase made possible by a gift from the R. C. Kemper Charitable Trust
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Collector of shouts (April 21), 2016
Acrylic on Yupo paper
79 x 60 in.
FIRELEI BÁEZ
a name that doesn't exist, 2016
Acrylic on canvas
72 x 60 in.
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Goldie (in Clio's presence), 2016
Acrylic on canvas
72 x 36 in.
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Can I Pass? Introducing the Paper Bag to the Fan Test for the Month of June, 2011
Gouache, ink and graphite on panel
96 1/8 x 107 in.
ZNI0267
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Four of the sun (or the talking cure), 2016
Acrylic on Yupo paper
38 x 30 in.
FIRELEI BÁEZ
A modest mythology of walls, 2016
Acrylic on canvas
60 x 48 in.
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Sans-Souci (This Threshold between a dematerialized and a historicized body), 2015
Acrylic and ink on linen
108 x 74 in.
FIRELEI BÁEZ
Ciguapa Pantera (to all the goods and pleasures of this world), 2015
Acrylic and ink on paper
95 × 65 in.
ZNI0150
"Firelei Báez: An Open Horizon (or) the Stillness of a Wound," Film by Art21, 2021
Photo: Lia Clay
New York-based artist Firelei Báez casts diasporic histories into an imaginative realm, re-working visual references drawn from the past to explore new possibilities for the future. In exuberantly colorful works on paper and canvas, large-scale sculptures, and immersive installations, Báez combines representational cues that span from hair textures to textile patterns, plantlife, folkloric and literary references, and wide-ranging emblems of healing and resistance. Often featuring strong female protagonists, Baez’s portraits incorporate the visual languages of regionally-specific mythology and ritual alongside those of science fiction and fantasy, to envision identities as unfixed, and inherited stories as perpetually-evolving. These empowered figures’ eyes most often engage directly with the viewer, asserting individuality and agency within their states of flux.
Born in Santiago de los Caballeros to a Dominican mother and a father of Haitian descent, Firelei Báez’s concerns with the politics of place and heritage can be traced back to her own upbringing on the border between Hispaniola’s two neighboring countries, whose longstanding history of tension is predicated in large part by ethnic difference. Báez’s work ties together subject matter mined from a wide breadth of diasporic narratives. In addition to self-portraiture, past series have examined ciguapas, elusive and cunning female creatures from Dominican folklore; tignons, head-coverings women of color were legally required to wear in 18th century New Orleans; and the iconography of the Black Panther Movement. Báez often paints directly onto historical material, such as found maps, manuals, and travelogues, layering figures over them. By rendering spectacular bodies that exist on opposite sides of intersecting boundaries—between human and landscape, for example, or those reinforcing racial and class stratification—Báez carries portraiture into an in-between space, where subjectivity is rooted in cultural and colonial narratives as much as it can likewise become untethered by them.
Firelei Báez (b. 1981, Dominican Republic) received an M.F.A. from Hunter College, a B.F.A. from the Cooper Union’s School of Art, and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In 2024, Báez will be the subject of a survey at ICA Boston. She was selected to participate in the 59th Venice Biennale which took place from April 23 to November 27, 2022. In 2021, Báez was included in the Artes Mundi 9 exhibition and was also the subject of a solo presentation at the ICA Watershed, Boston, MA. In 2019, the artist's work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the Mennello Museum of Art, Orlando, FL, the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and the Modern Window at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Her monumental outdoor sculpture, 19.604692°N 72.218596°W, was included in En Plein Air, the 2019 High Line Art exhibition. Báez was featured in the Front International 2022 Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, On, Gods of Dust and Rainbows, 2018 Berlin Biennale, Prospect.3: Notes for Now (2014), Bronx Calling: The Second AIM Biennial (2013), and El Museo’s Bienal: The (S) Files (2011). Her major 2015 solo exhibition Bloodlines was organized by the Pérez Art Museum Miami and traveled to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
Other recent solo exhibitions of Báez’s work have been presented by The Studio Museum, Harlem, NY; Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, OH; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; Taller Puertorriqueno, Philadelphia, PA; and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT. Báez is the recipient of many awards: most recently, the Artes Mundi Prize (2021); the Philip Guston Rome Prize (2021); the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts (2020), the Soros Arts Fellowship (2019), the United States Artists Fellowship (2019), the College Art Association Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work (2018), the Future Generation Art Prize (2017), the Chiaro Award (2016), and Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors (2011). Her work belongs to the permanent collections of institutions including The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; BNY Mellon Art Collection, Pittsburgh, PA; The Cleveland Clinic Fine Art Collection, Cleveland, OH; Dallas Museum of Art, TX; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.; Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, MA;The Isabela and Agustín Coppel Collection, Mexico City, Mexico; Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany; Mandeville Gallery, Union College, Schenectady, NY; The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; New Orleans Museum of Art, LA; Orlando Museum of Art, FL; Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL; Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, OH; Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Sindika Dokolo Foundation Collection, Luanda, Angola; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY.
In this video, Firelei Báez speaks about her latest exhibition, her ongoing use of found book pages, and mythologies ranging from the Dominican ciguapa to the black Atlantis developed in the techno music of Drexciya.