{"id":506742,"date":"2026-05-28T10:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T10:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/506742\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T10:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T10:36:10","slug":"firelei-baez-harvests-trickster-energy-to-remap-stories-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/506742\/","title":{"rendered":"Firelei B\u00e1ez Harvests Trickster Energy to Remap Stories of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emma Willard was a feminist pioneer who pushed early for equality in education for white women and established herself as a reputable artist who combined her love of illustration with her love of pedagogy. She created inventive visualizations of historic events, which she described as \u201cmemory palaces.\u201d In 1845, toward the end of her life, Willard turned a drawing of a sprawling tree into a wall map<\/a> depicting American history. It is perhaps her best-known illustration, which still appears as the cover of textbooks and is available, as a print.<\/p>\n

Almost 100 years later, that map serves as a canvas for the artist Firelei B\u00e1ez<\/a> (pronounced FEER-eh-lay), who used the source material as inspiration for her own cosmology. Willard\u2019s rambling tree reminded B\u00e1ez of an underwater creature, so, for her solo show at Hauser & Wirth in Chelsea, she painted a large, milky white jellyfish whose lanky tentacles flop onto the tree\u2019s bark, which is inscribed with the dates of \u201cColumbus\u2019 Discovery 1492,\u201d \u201cPilgrims landing\u201d and \u201cConfederacy begins.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her own work, which B\u00e1ez named \u201cNot even unalterable limitations (or a transformational topology for remembering Willard\u2019s Chronographer of American History),\u201d a chaos of color erupts below the gelatinous creature, with protrusions of legs and feet, some comfortably blotting out the colonial past. Others use the base of the map for leverage, as if to flee the violence implicit in the timeline. The figure represents someone \u2014 or something \u2014 \u201ccoming into being, unruly, mid-formation,\u201d B\u00e1ez said.<\/p>\n

Maps function as place makers and stand-ins for collective memory. But they have been manipulated endlessly to perpetuate notions and policies, often harmful, about global hierarchies and supremacies. Even today, on contemporary maps, Greenland often appears to be about the same size as Africa, even though Africa is roughly 14 times larger.<\/p>\n

B\u00e1ez, 45, has long collaborated with archives to unsettle the idea of a singular past, or a linear history \u2014 especially considering that Columbus\u2019s \u201cdiscovery\u201d in 1492 was technically not what is currently called the United States. It was modern-day Dominican Republic, where she was born. B\u00e1ez\u2019s work remaps the stories of the world, creating possibilities to understand history anew, and by extension, humanity.<\/p>\n

In the case of the American tree, it is perpetuating the idea of America as organic and autonomous as nature itself, and B\u00e1ez replaces that myth with one of the artist\u2019s own, reminding viewers that despite how it may feel at times, the future of the world, and humanity, is still in motion.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery painting is over a document that purports to contain the world or reality, all in one two-dimensional image,\u201d she said. It documents \u201cthe hubris of the 19th century,\u201d as both archive and warning. Her work, she said, is trying to bring forth the \u201cidea of the actual complexity of being, of navigating, of knowing more, and the possibility of knowing more.\u201d<\/p>\n

During an early spring visit to her studio in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, B\u00e1ez showed me several works in progress that appear in her current show at Hauser & Wirth, titled \u201cfeet squelching on wet grass, nourished by uncertainty.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a painting layered on top of an 1860 infographic by a German cartographer named Paul Ahrens depicting a 360-degree view from a peak in a German forest. In B\u00e1ez\u2019s studiousness lives some trickster energy. The original topography seemed phallic to the artist, so her modification also features a cheeky close-up of a painting of a single breast, complete with areola, stretch marks, pores and hair follicles. She named it simply: \u201cView From the Tower.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another work on display uses a set of French playing cards developed by a prolific geographer named Pierre Du Val<\/a> for the young Louis XIV, to teach him about other countries that he needed to maintain relations with, to negotiate \u2014 or invade. \u201cIt was also a game of colonization,\u201d B\u00e1ez said. \u201cI\u2019ll take your kingdom or I\u2019ll take your land in a game.\u201d She painted a stampede of horses over that one.<\/p>\n

B\u00e1ez\u2019s work is deeply rooted in intense scholarship. It is also wedded to the spiritual world. She may have a proposition for a new work, but it always starts with the pour \u2014 the moment paint hits the canvas. \u201cIt is an index of my body and the architecture of the space that I\u2019m in,\u201d she told me. The figures in the work emerge from that crucial moment. Consider it a divination.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate the word \u2018woo-woo,\u2019\u201d she said. But anyone involved in the miracle of creation \u2014 whether painting, the birth of a child \u2014 understands this feeling.<\/p>\n

She is also showing two bronzes of feminine figures who appear half-human and half mystical being, their bodies subsumed by twisting, winding organic matter, as if they have morphed into folkloric creatures.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing brings more fear to human civilization than the idea of nature being unkempt,\u201d she said. Additionally, there is a series of figurative drawings resplendent with color, each of them exploring possibilities for human transcendence into a new, fluid flesh state. . If the maps are a repatriation of timelines, these works offer a glimpse of futurity.<\/p>\n

During my visit, we sat on an ornate couch by a table full of herbal teas, nuts and dried fruit. Her studio doubles as a lush greenhouse full of more than 100 plants, including monsteras, rubber trees and ferns. The centerpiece of the Hauser & Wirth show leaned on the opposite wall, a 50-foot-long panel of sprawling and lush flora and foliage over a document called \u201cView of Nature in All Climates, from the Equator to the Arctic Circle,\u201d a pictorial diagram drawn by John Emslie in the mid-1800s. <\/p>\n

B\u00e1ez worked on her version (called \u201cView of Nature\u201d) upstate, near the Catskills, where she often rents a studio. Her painted vegetation almost chokes the document out of being. Figures seem to move throughout the greenery. It calls to the mind the postapocalyptic landscapes of \u201cThe Last of Us,\u201d or \u201c28 Years Later,\u201d when the horrors of reality are tempered by the beauty of nature reclaiming itself as rightful heir to the land.<\/p>\n

They resemble the Dominican and Floridian landscapes of her childhood, and of her dreams. Here, B\u00e1ez has rendered the modern dilemma all too neatly: Horror is mundane. The apocalypse is not a singularity. It undulates eternally, populated by aftershocks and fresh new events that rival the previous. A similar work \u2014 an 85-foot-wide mural \u2014 is currently being installed in the new Terminal One, at John F. Kennedy Airport, and will open in October.<\/p>\n

She prints the documents directly from various online archives, so that they contain all their original marks, like scrapes, tears, fingerprints. And then she paints over them, \u201crewilding\u201d them, as she described it to me.<\/p>\n

B\u00e1ez grew up in Miami, and whenever there was strife in the city, her mother sent her and her siblings back home to spend time with their grandmother. \u201cI remember that being such a creative space,\u201d she said. \u201cThere was no television. We made whole new worlds in our heads, and it was formative. It made enough of an impact as a 4-year-old that I still remember that freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

B\u00e1ez\u2019s work is prescient, grappling with the production of knowledge in the modern world and the havoc wreaked when one group of people decided to establish a hierarchy with themselves at the top, and bend the universe to their will. She is in great company \u2014 including Wangechi Mutu and Toyin Ojih Odutola \u2014 working to rewild the imagination. Their joint efforts are declarative acts of refusal against the ending of a story. Their work acknowledges that it may only be beginning.<\/p>\n

Firelei B\u00e1ez: \u201cfeet squelching on wet grass, nourished by uncertainty\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

Through July 31, Hauser & Wirth, 542 West 22nd Street, Chelsea; 212-790-3900, hauserwirth.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emma Willard was a feminist pioneer who pushed early for equality in education for white women and established…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[267],"tags":[595,365,362,363,364,219996,219998,366,18,117,219997,29962,19,17,92994,4591,20729],"class_list":["post-506742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-art","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-baez","tag-chelsea-manhattan","tag-design","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-firelei","tag-hauser-wirth","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-maps","tag-ny","tag-race-and-ethnicity"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116651765651253089","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}