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Exhibitions

Firelei Báez: Bloodlines

February 17 – May 21, 2017

Tracing the history of social movements in the United States and the Caribbean, Firelei Báez: Bloodlines presents a new body of work by Firelei Báez.

Báez, born in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, is inspired by lineages of black resistance and makes connections that further our understanding of dispersed groups.

Bloodlines showcases paintings and drawings depicting textiles, hair designs, and body ornaments, linking symbols of power with human gestures. The work is labor intensive, delicate, rich in color, and presents female subjects as strongly connected to both a past and present understanding of race. In several paintings women are featured in elaborate tignons, an 18th century headdress imposed by law for women of color in New Orleans and a tradition that although imposed as a form of oppression became, through elaborate patterning and design, a symbol of power and beauty. Azabache, gemstones carved into fists and worn in Latin American cultures as protection from evil spirits, and panthers, a symbol claimed by the Black Panthers, the African American revolutionary party founded in the 1960s, also adorn the work. The exhibition also includes a number of new works shown for the first time.

Firelei Báez: Bloodlines is organized by Pérez Art Museum Miami Assistant Curator María Elena Ortiz. The Pittsburgh presentation is coordinated by Jessica Beck, The Warhol’s associate curator of art.

Support for the Pittsburgh presentation is generously provided by Karen and Jim Johnson, Vivian and Bill Benter, Michele Fabrizi, and Kiya Tomlin. Firelei Báez: Bloodlines and its presentation at the Pérez Art Museum Miami was made possible by BNY Mellon with additional support from Chloé.

In this bust portrait of a woman with dark skin she sits in profile with her head turned 45 degrees to look directly at the viewer. She has dark brown eyes and wears an elaborate headdress that fills the top half of the vertical portrait. The headdress is a variety of whites, beiges, browns, and a bit of blue where the fabric folds creating shadows. It includes a variety of decorative patterns, and one of the patterns includes black panthers.

Firelei Báez, Sans-Souci (This threshold between a dematerialized and a historicized body), 2015, collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, museum purchase with funds provided by Leslie and Greg Ferrero and Rose Ellen Meyerhoff Greene, photo by Oriol Tarridas Photography.

The premise of the show is to bring out subaltern histories, things that are not taught in our textbooks, that exist but haven’t been always named.

Firelei Báez

Image Gallery

A gallery featuring wall text explaining Firelei Baez's Bloodlines exhibition and two large abstract paintings by the artist.
A group of visitors face away from the camera as they examine a display in the Firelei Baez bloodlines exhibition. Small paintings of various sizes are tacked to the wall in a large cluster in front of them.

Photo by Sean Carroll

In this photograph of the Bloodlines exhibit, the center of the image is taken up by a wall decorated with ornate blue designs and an arch in the center. Several paintings of women in profile are visible.
A group of volunteers help artist Firelei Baez scrape paint off a wall in her exhibition gallery.
A photograph of Firelei Baez's Bloodlines exhibition. On the left wall is a series of sillhoutte portraits with eyes. On the right is a painting of a palm tree whose trunk ends in a pair of hairy legs. On the far wall is an abrastract painting in gold, pink, iand red.
A woman with short brown hair gestures towards a large painting of fabric decorated with delicate blue designs at a Sip and Sketch event.

Photo by Sean Carroll

The wall of the Firelei Baez exhibition space, painted pale blue with white floral shapes. Paint has been scraped away in a few places on the wall.