Flowers, hair and a voluminous white dress obscure the features of the figure reclining across this densely patterned painting by Firelei Baez at James Cohan Gallery. The title refers to Olamina, the highly empathic fictional character imagined by sci-fi novelist Octavia Butler, but here, the figure seems unburdened by her gift or our gaze. Printed below the paint, on the canvas itself are numbers, a grid and a timeline that suggest the maps and documents that Baez frequently adopts and obscures as she brilliantly and flamboyantly asserts her own imagery over outmoded Euro-centric presentations of information. (On view in Tribeca through Dec 21st).
