In her first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth since joining the gallery in 2023, Firelei Báez is presenting new large-scale canvases, drawings and her first-ever bronze sculpture at the gallery’s Downtown Arts District center in Los Angeles.
Complex and layered, Báez’s work depicts fantastical hybrid figures and reimagined worlds. Employing beauty to reprocess the enduring effects of violence and trauma, Báez challenges traditional representations of history, nationality, gender and race. United by common cause, the paintings incorporate a wide range of subjects including art history, science fiction, anthropology, pop culture, folklore and fantasy.
Firelei Báez has achieved wide acclaim over the past decade for her rigorous paintings, drawings and immersive installations that explore the influences of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. Conjuring forgotten narratives, Báez carefully fills history’s lacunae with joyful rebellion.
The fact that it amazes me does not mean I relinquish it is a reference to the work of Martinican writer and philosopher Édouard Glissant, a key figure in shaping theories informing the Caribbean’s influence on the global stage. Drawing inspiration from Glissant’s text, ‘Poetics of Relation’ (1990)—from which the title directly quotes— Báez navigates the tensions between identity and place, using Glissant’s concept of opacity to explore modes of resistance, namely the ability to navigate the world freely within a refusal of being fully understood—both to others and to oneself.
Báez considers mythology an important tool, ‘a way of correcting the past and projecting a different future.’ Growing up in the Dominican Republic, the artist heard local folk stories about a mythic femme trickster called a ‘ciguapa’ who was known for her elusiveness.
While such lore was shared to discourage unruly and wild behavior, Báez has embraced the ciguapa in her work as a figure of endless possibility. Ever-morphing and multiplying, her composite creatures are often depicted with human legs, a coat of delicate fur and backwards facing feet so that she remains traceless and ultimately unknowable. In the ciguapa, Báez explores the body as a living archive, a shape-shifting repository of meaning and history, whose continuous transformation is inherently defiant.
On view in the exhibition, Báez’s first foray into bronze also takes the form of a larger-than-life femme protagonist. Reaching across geographies and histories, the figure is caught between a graceful dance and muscular resistance; Daphne and Apollo encounter the ciguapa amid strong storm winds. In turning to a new medium, Báez deepens her exploration of historical implications: As a material that carries the weight of established knowledge and hierarchies, bronze is endowed with degrees of grandeur and the rigidity of historicity. As with her other archival interventions, the artist’s use of this literally and figuratively freighted medium can be read as a reparative gesture. Affirming the beauty of the material as a value while countering the power paradigms associated with it, Báez offers up a shape and image that convey defiance, healing and a promise of renewal. Complementing her paintings and drawings, this towering sculpture beckons viewers into the new worlds Báez prospects.
Firelei Báez, The fact that it amazes me does not mean I relinquish it exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Downtown Los Angeles coincides with the artist’s two museum surveys, ‘Trust Memory Over History’ at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg Germany (6 June – 13 October 2024) and ‘Firelei Báez’ at Vancouver Art Gallery Canada (2 November 2024 – 16 March 2025), and follows her first UK exhibition ‘Sueño de la Madrugada (A Midnight’s Dream)’ at South London Gallery (28 June – 8 September 2024).
Will you be checking out Firelei Báez’s new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles?
