WEBVTT 00:00:11.744 --> 00:00:15.920 FIRELEI BÁEZ: In most power relationships, 00:00:16.720 --> 00:00:19.120 you have the victim trying to solve the situation. 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:24.000 I don't want to create narratives of victimhood. 00:00:25.600 --> 00:00:29.840 I want to flip it. 00:00:31.120 --> 00:00:35.920 The freedom that I offer in each painting is in the mutable body. 00:00:37.280 --> 00:00:39.760 In having bodies in constant transition, 00:00:40.880 --> 00:00:44.400 it leaves it open for the viewer to shift ideas of power. 00:00:45.760 --> 00:00:48.800 In that process, you shift the world around you. 00:00:50.080 --> 00:00:57.840 That's where beauty can be subversive. 00:01:28.320 --> 00:01:28.640 ["Firelei Báez: An Open Horizon (or) the Stillness of a Wound"] 00:01:28.640 --> 00:01:30.000 If it were up to me, 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:32.800 I'd be a hermit in some mountain seascape, 00:01:33.480 --> 00:01:34.480 [LAUGHS] 00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:38.560 and I'd have my giant space with open windows, 00:01:38.560 --> 00:01:39.840 and f*** it if rains comes in. 00:01:41.840 --> 00:01:53.840 That's the dream. 00:01:53.840 --> 00:01:55.205 [CHORAL SINGING] 00:01:55.205 --> 00:01:57.680 [Firelei's studio, The Bronx] 00:01:57.680 --> 00:01:59.520 But I remember always making. 00:02:00.240 --> 00:02:01.520 Maybe one time when I was six, 00:02:03.040 --> 00:02:07.840 other kids would have me draw out these very fancy "mariquitas" for them. 00:02:09.280 --> 00:02:11.440 I would have these elaborate ball gowns. 00:02:12.240 --> 00:02:14.480 They would always have very intricate hair. 00:02:18.320 --> 00:02:21.840 I was always dealing with the body. 00:02:23.920 --> 00:02:28.720 My earliest childhood was in Loma de Cabrera, 00:02:28.720 --> 00:02:32.400 which is right at the border of Dominican Republic and Haiti. 00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:35.120 [ARCHIVAL VOICE OVER] --Should you go straight out 00:02:35.120 --> 00:02:37.200 --from that southeast end of Cuba, 00:02:37.200 --> 00:02:40.720 --you will come next to the second largest island of the romantic archipelago. 00:02:42.880 --> 00:02:46.160 We would make all these assumptions of what it is to be someone from the Caribbean, 00:02:47.360 --> 00:02:50.560 and when you fall outside that, then you can get something better. 00:02:53.920 --> 00:02:56.800 One of the first reasons that I wanted to work on these paintings 00:02:56.800 --> 00:03:00.320 was looking at some of the first scientific illustrations 00:03:00.320 --> 00:03:02.080 of flora and fauna from the New World. 00:03:02.640 --> 00:03:03.840 Looking at Carl Linneaus, 00:03:05.760 --> 00:03:09.840 here is this guy who was the foundation of modern scientific methods-- 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:12.346 of observation and categorization. 00:03:13.520 --> 00:03:17.273 But so much of his work was sheer nonsense. 00:03:19.840 --> 00:03:24.240 It equated the New World Black and Brown body 00:03:24.240 --> 00:03:25.920 with beastiality. 00:03:29.840 --> 00:03:32.797 In telling of what the New World people were, 00:03:32.797 --> 00:03:35.181 you'd be next to cannibals and vampires-- 00:03:37.920 --> 00:03:42.204 so, leaning into their already fallible vision 00:03:42.880 --> 00:03:44.829 and making something new. 00:03:47.520 --> 00:03:50.080 In reading my paintings of "ciguapas," 00:03:50.080 --> 00:03:54.320 I'm asking the viewer to come to terms with their own feelings 00:03:54.320 --> 00:03:56.968 around a woman's body. 00:04:00.425 --> 00:04:05.457 [Ciguapa: A mythological  creature of Domincan folklore] 00:04:06.113 --> 00:04:08.360 The ciguapa is this trickster figure. 00:04:08.640 --> 00:04:10.124 She is a seductress. 00:04:11.200 --> 00:04:15.723 Someone will be lured by her and then  be completely lost and never seen again. 00:04:18.640 --> 00:04:21.270 The description is so ambiguous. 00:04:21.600 --> 00:04:24.080 It can be anything from a mongoose, 00:04:24.080 --> 00:04:26.000 to the most beautiful woman, 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:28.240 to the most ugly woman. 00:04:28.240 --> 00:04:30.887 The only certain thing is  that her legs are backwards-- 00:04:31.600 --> 00:04:35.207 if you followed their footsteps, you  were going in the wrong direction-- 00:04:36.640 --> 00:04:40.079 and that she has this lustrous mane of hair. 00:04:41.360 --> 00:04:44.480 She was meant to be something  that made us so fearful 00:04:44.480 --> 00:04:48.960 that we could be quiet for long  enough to be groomed into civility. 00:04:55.120 --> 00:04:57.680 The normative tone of the story 00:04:58.240 --> 00:05:01.120 is these are wanton female creatures. 00:05:01.120 --> 00:05:04.400 They're hyper-sexual and they derail culture. 00:05:05.680 --> 00:05:08.640 The understory is they are highly independent, 00:05:09.200 --> 00:05:10.400 they're self-possessed, 00:05:10.960 --> 00:05:12.880 and they feel deeply. 00:05:14.720 --> 00:05:16.301 So who would want to be that? 00:05:18.960 --> 00:05:21.120 What was exciting in using that image 00:05:21.120 --> 00:05:25.680 was to be able to incorporate all  those things that were labeled abject-- 00:05:25.680 --> 00:05:28.320 that were seen as unwanted-- 00:05:28.320 --> 00:05:31.120 and reframe them as something beautiful 00:05:31.120 --> 00:05:33.425 and with an eye of desire. 00:05:36.386 --> 00:05:40.000 ["Ciguapa Antellana," 2018, Harlem] 00:05:42.480 --> 00:05:44.800 I recently went to my aunts, and she was like, 00:05:44.800 --> 00:05:47.404 "You know, I never would have  thought you would be an artist." 00:05:48.240 --> 00:05:51.840 She was the one who was raising us when I was about seven. 00:05:53.040 --> 00:05:56.640 For her, she saw it as a  little bit of troublemaking, 00:05:57.920 --> 00:06:00.880 because I'd be the one  trying to sew paper together 00:06:00.880 --> 00:06:03.200 and getting my finger stuck in the needle. 00:06:04.400 --> 00:06:06.000 Like sewing right through my finger. 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:08.160 But I was just like, "I want to bind my book." 00:06:08.160 --> 00:06:10.213 "It's going to be the thing.  I'm going to make it perfect." 00:06:14.400 --> 00:06:18.236 They did call me...I don't know if it  was "The Demolisher" or "The Hellian." 00:06:18.236 --> 00:06:19.034 [LAUGHS] 00:06:20.240 --> 00:06:22.720 Whenever I imagine a painter, 00:06:22.720 --> 00:06:24.880 it's someone who is very composed-- 00:06:24.880 --> 00:06:26.559 kind of like a "lady painter." 00:06:27.120 --> 00:06:29.440 But, I feel like a car mechanic. 00:06:32.800 --> 00:06:35.101 My mom is a master seamstress. 00:06:35.920 --> 00:06:38.160 She can make really beautiful things. 00:06:38.160 --> 00:06:41.440 But she was so caught up in a 100-hour work week 00:06:42.800 --> 00:06:45.741 that she always does things for bare function. 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:48.648 It makes for a lot of precarity. 00:06:49.040 --> 00:06:52.080 So none of the things that you build tend to last. 00:06:53.520 --> 00:06:56.880 I'm trying to break that cycle  and teach my nephews and nieces 00:06:56.880 --> 00:07:01.040 to think of themselves as part  of longer cycles behind them 00:07:01.040 --> 00:07:03.127 and long cycles before them-- 00:07:04.080 --> 00:07:08.603 that every choice that we make is predicated  by the people we hope to love in the future 00:07:08.720 --> 00:07:10.435 and the people we love in the past. 00:07:14.240 --> 00:07:16.106 It's always within your grasp 00:07:16.640 --> 00:07:18.301 to make something new. 00:07:19.680 --> 00:07:20.915 It's exhausting, 00:07:22.320 --> 00:07:24.325 but limitless.