Firelei Báez has created several stunning paintings for her exhibition The fact that it amazes me does not mean I relinquish it, currently on view at Hauser & Wirth’s downtown Los Angeles location. The historical documents that serve as a background for her beautiful ciguapa figures add another dimension to the complex works.

From the gallery’s press release-

New York-based artist 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.

This September, in her first exhibition with Hauser & Wirth since joining the gallery in 2023, Báez will present 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.

‘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.

In the painting, Zemi (A New Spelling of My Name), (2024), a supernatural figure appears at the entrance of a cave. Rather than standing before a blank canvas, Báez begins her paintings over plans that conceal narratives of violence and exploitation. In the aforementioned painting, Báez builds her imagery atop a 19th-Century drawing of the Taíno caves in Santana, Hispaniola. At the time of its production, the illustration functioned as a factual document; however, it was only an approximation of a real location wherein Báez’s hybrid figure materializes, a triumphant manifestation of empowerment and hope in a pieced-together landscape.

This exhibition closes 1/5/24.