“Trust Memory Over History” is a solo exhibition by Firelei Báez, presently on view at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (located at Gl. Strandvej 13, 3050 Humlebæk, Copenhagen, Denmark) until February 18, 2024. The exhibition will then travel on to Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany. [Also see previous post: Firelei Báez paints away the world’s borders.]
Description (Louisiana): The first solo exhibition in Europe of Dominican-American artist Firelei Báez (b. 1981). In her monumental paintings and installations, New York-based Báez creates images bursting with colours and symbols based on her own Caribbean culture, featuring folktales, colonial occupation, revolution and divided societies.
A key figure in painting today, Firelei Báez succeeds in drawing her viewers into enveloping, fictional worlds with poetic precision. Taking point of departure in how inherited stories shape and maintain culture and identity, Báez challenges powerful concepts like truth and history. Her approach to painting is thus intentionally destructive.
A NEW LANGUAGE OF POWER
Firelei Báez usually paints on top of ancient colonial maps or construction plans for colonial architecture, both of which represent the establishment’s notion of truthfulness and objectivity. The artist overwrites – or replaces – the traditional language of power with a new energetic force and vibrant, colourful expressions, mixing real-life events with sci-fi fables.
The exhibition, entitled ‘Trust Memory over History’, focuses mainly on works Báez has created over the past five years, including a large number of new works. It also features several of Báez’s characteristic paper installations, in which she combines countless painted pages of books and maps to form a single work. These installations form the basis of her large paintings.
MEET FIRELEI BÁEZ: In this new interview from Louisiana Channel, you are invited to join Firelei Báez in her studio, where she shares a closer look into her artworks and practice.
[. . .] WATER, HAIR AND THE CIGUAPA
Both hair and water are recurring elements in Firelei Báez’s works. Straightened black hair gathered into small buns can be seen in both her figurative and abstract hybrid compositions, and serve – among other things – as a reference point for the cultural significance associated with hair. For many artists of the diaspora, the ocean in particular serves as a repository for the violence endured during the Middle Passage. However, in Báez’s interpretation of water, the spotlight shifts towards a kind of rebirth and the beauty that emerges from even the most dire of circumstances.
Especially the Ciguapa – a mythological creature originating in Dominican folklore – returns again and again as a motif in her work. It is a figure that holds a special connection to her childhood memories, which she in her works depicts as a hybrid being with both feminine and masculine attributes as well as human, animal, and plant characteristics.
For more information, see https://louisiana.dk/en/exhibition/firelei-baez/
[Shown above: Firelei Báez, “Black quantum physicists (Duppy for Delacroix)” (2023), oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas.]
“Trust Memory Over History” is a solo exhibition by Firelei Báez, presently on view at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (located at Gl. Strandvej 13, 3050 Humlebæk, Copenhagen, Denmark) until February 18, 2024. The exhibition will then travel on to Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany. [Also see previous post: Firelei Báez paints away the world’s borders.] Description
