Firelei Báez
Firelei Báez (born 1981) is a Dominican artist based in New York City known for intricate works on paper and canvas, as well as large scale sculpture. Her art explores the Western canon through the elements of non-Western reading. Báez's work has been exhibited at the New Museum, New York, NY, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL, Taller Puertorriqueño, Philadelphia, PA, Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Clinton, NY, the Drawing Center, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY and the Studio Museum, New York, NY. Her work was featured in the United  States Biennial Prospect.3 in New Orleans, LA, curated by Franklin Sirmans. She was included in Getty's Pacific Standard Time's LA>LA exhibition, and in the Pinchuk Art Foundation's Future Generation's Art Prize exhibition at the 2017 Venice Biennale. She has been the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Award, the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Award in Painting, the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting, and the Chiaro Award from the Headlands. In 2015, Perez Art Museum Miami organized "Firelei Báez: Bloodlines", with an introduction by the museum's Director, Franklin Sirmans, an essay  by Assistant Curator María Elena Ortiz, an interview with Naima Keith, and a contribution by the writer Roxane Gay. Early life and education. Born in Santiago de Los Caballeros to a Dominican mother and a father of Haitian descent, she was raised in Dajabón, a market city on the Dominican Republic's border with Haiti. At the age of 10, she relocated with her family to Miami. Báez received an M.F.A. from Hunter College and a B.F.A. from Cooper Union and studied at The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She had solo exhibitions at the Utah Museum of Contemporary  Art, Pérez Art Museum Miami, and the DePaul Art Museum. Career. In fall of 2015, Báez secured exposure with the solo museum shows “Patterns of Resistance” at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and “Bloodlines” at Perez Art Museum Miami. In February 2016, Báez created a participatory installation with museum patrons at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The program was presented in conjunction with the exhibition “The Power of Prints: The Legacy of William M. Ivins and A. Hyatt Mayor". The installation itself remained on display through March of that year. In 2018, she was commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation  Authority to install two wall murals and two mezzanine level murals for the 163 St-Amsterdam Avenue subway station. Publisher: Perez Art Museum; First edition. edition (January 1, 2015) |