Tag: firelei baez

Firelei Baez at James Cohan Gallery

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).

Firelei Baez, Olamina (How do we learn to love each other while we are embattled), oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas), 86 3/8 x 114 ½, 1 ½ inches, 2022.

Firelei Baez at James Cohan Gallery

Under a recreation of the night sky as it appeared at the start of the Haitian Revolution, Firelei Baez presents a dramatic installation at James Cohan Gallery’s Lower East Side space featuring empowered female figures who assert their presence in the gallery and in history.  Wearing a tignon that refers to the 18th century legal requirement for African-diasporic women to cover their hair, this casually posed yet regal figure lacks a mouth yet speaks with her eyes.  (On view through June 16th).

Firelei Baez, installation view of A Drexcyen Chronocommons (To win the war you fought it sideways) at James Cohan Gallery on the Lower East Side, April 2019.