FIRELEI BÁEZ: ALTERNATE PASTS AND POTENTIAL FUTURES
ICA Boston presents Firelei Báez’s exhibition, the first North American show dedicated to the artist’s work.
“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.
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 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 color, 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 will offer 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.
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Firelei Báez. Untitled (Temple of time), 2020. Oil, acrylic, and inkjet on canvas. 94 ½ x 132 3/8 x 1 %/8 inches (240 x 336.2 x 4cm). Wilks Family Collection. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, New York. Photo by Phoebe d`Heurle. Credit: Firelei Báez.
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Firelei Báez, Untitled (Les tables de géographie réduites en un jeu de cartes), 2022. Oil, acrylic, and inkjet on canvas. 82 3/8 x 105 3/4 inches (209.2 x 268.4 cm). Collection of Deborah Beckmann and Jacob Kotzubei. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, New York. Photo by Jackie Furtado. ©
Firelei Báez
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Firelei Báez, Man Without a Country (aka anthropophagist wading in the Artibonite River) (detail), 2014-15. Gouache, ink, and chine-collé on 225 deaccessioned book pages. 106 1/4 x 252 inches (270 x 640 cm). Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. Gift of Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté. Image courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, New York. Photo by Oriol Tarridas. © Firelei Báez.
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Firelei Báez, Man Without a Country (aka anthropophagist wading in the Artibonite River), 2014-15. Gouache, ink, and chine-collé on 225 deaccessioned book pages, 106 1/4 x 252 inches (270 × 640 cm). Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston; Gift of Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté. Image courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, New York. Photo by Oriol Tarridas. © Firelei Báez
The exhibition will tour throughout North America to the Vancouver Art Gallery (Nov. 2, 2024—Mar. 16, 2025) and the Des Moines Art Center (Jun. 14, 2025—Sep. 21, 2025).
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