Firelei Báez

Today on the GWA Podcast is the esteemed artist Firelei Báez!

Hailed for her paintings that explode with effervescent colour and are filled with elements from the natural and supernatural world, or hybridised figures morphing in and out of abstraction, Báez works on myriad surfaces to create deeper conversations about hierarchies in history. Her paintings are always embedded with so much meaning that, as well as being visually arresting and beautiful, revealed biases about our past while also being embedded in history. So much of her work is rooted in myth, such as the stories she grew up learning in the Dominican Republic about the female tricksters, ciguapas, as well as her interest in spirituality.

Born in 1980, Báez from age seven lived in Miami, and after hearing about a free art school in New York City, moved to the city to study at Cooper Union, then to Skowhegan, and back to New York to complete her Masters at Hunter College. In 2022, she was included in the formative Venice Biennale exhibition The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani, and since 2024, has been the subject of a major solo exhibition in the US organised by the ICA Boston, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among others.

In recent years, Báez's work has moved into sculpture, working in bronze in forms influenced by shapeshifting alien beings from the writings of Octavia Butler. She has also scaled up her painting work, working on canvases up to 50 feet wide that are nothing but an otherworldly yet worldly experience, showing nature back to us in the most profound of ways. And I cannot wait to find out more.

THIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY THE LEVETT COLLECTION: www.famm.com/en/ www.instagram.com/famm_mougins // www.merrellpublishers.com/9781858947037
Follow us: Katy Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel
Sound editing by Tory Pope
Co-produced with Molly Lafosse
Music by Ben Wetherfield