Firelei Bàez

This monograph gathers the work of Dominican Republic-born artist Firelei Báez, born in 1981, whose paintings, drawings and installations revisit the past of the Atlantic Basin. Across these pieces she borrows from anthropology, geography, folklore, fantasy, science fiction and social history to question how race, gender and nationality are defined. Her vivid canvases are built from dense, layered patterns, recurring motifs and intense color, and they usually center women of color, dressing them in royal-style clothing and ornament and presenting them with unflinching stares.

The book was produced with the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, ahead of a North American traveling solo show of Báez's work. Its many full-page illustrations draw on the artist's preparatory sketchbook pages, shown alongside notes, source images and close-up views of finished pieces. Several scholars contribute essays that consider her place in recent contemporary art.

Báez reworks visual material from diasporic histories to imagine other possible futures. She paints over enlarged copies of historical maps and documents with figures, symbols and gestural abstraction, then fills these scenes with hybrid forms that combine folkloric and literary allusions, textile patterns and plant life.