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FIRELEI BÁEZ:
In most power relationships,

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you have the victim trying to solve the situation.

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I don't want to create narratives of victimhood.

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I want to flip it.

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The freedom that I offer in each painting
is in the mutable body.

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In having bodies in constant transition,

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it leaves it open for the viewer to
shift ideas of power.

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In that process,
you shift the world around you.

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That's where beauty can be subversive.

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["Firelei Báez: An Open Horizon (or)
the Stillness of a Wound"]

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If it were up to me,

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I'd be a hermit in some mountain seascape,

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[LAUGHS]

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and I'd have my giant space with open windows,

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and f*** it if rains comes in.

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That's the dream.

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[CHORAL SINGING]

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[Firelei's studio, The Bronx]

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But I remember always making.

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Maybe one time when I was six,

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other kids would have me draw out these
very fancy "mariquitas" for them.

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I would have these elaborate ball gowns.

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They would always have very intricate hair.

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I was always dealing with the body.

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My earliest childhood was in Loma de Cabrera,

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which is right at the border of
Dominican Republic and Haiti.

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[ARCHIVAL VOICE OVER]
--Should you go straight out

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--from that southeast end of Cuba,

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--you will come next to the second largest
island of the romantic archipelago.

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We would make all these assumptions of what
it is to be someone from the Caribbean,

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and when you fall outside that,
then you can get something better.

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One of the first reasons that I wanted to
work on these paintings

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was looking at some of the first
scientific illustrations

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of flora and fauna from the New World.

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Looking at Carl Linneaus,

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here is this guy who was the foundation of
modern scientific methods

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of observation and categorization.

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But so much of his work was sheer nonsense.

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It equated the New World Black and Brown body

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with beastiality.

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In telling of what the New World people were,

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you'd be next to cannibals and vampires--

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so, leaning into their already fallible vision

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and making something new.

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In reading my paintings of "ciguapas,"

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I'm asking the viewer to come to terms
with their own feelings

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around a woman's body.

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[Ciguapa: A mythological 
creature of Domincan folklore]

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The ciguapa is this trickster figure.

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She is a seductress.

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Someone will be lured by her and then 
be completely lost and never seen again.

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The description is so ambiguous.

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It can be anything from a mongoose,

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to the most beautiful woman,

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to the most ugly woman.

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The only certain thing is 
that her legs are backwards--

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if you followed their footsteps, you 
were going in the wrong direction--

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and that she has this lustrous mane of hair.

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She was meant to be something 
that made us so fearful

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that we could be quiet for long 
enough to be groomed into civility.

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The normative tone of the story

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is these are wanton female creatures.

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They're hyper-sexual and they derail culture.

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The understory is they are highly independent,

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they're self-possessed,

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and they feel deeply.

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So who wouldn't want to be that?

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What was exciting in using that image

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was to be able to incorporate all 
those things that were labeled abject--

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that were seen as unwanted--

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and reframe them as something beautiful

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and with an eye of desire.

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["Ciguapa Antellana," 2018, Harlem]

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I recently went to my aunts, and she was like,

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"You know, I never would have 
thought you would be an artist."

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She was the one who was
raising us when I was about seven.

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For her, she saw it as a 
little bit of troublemaking,

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because I'd be the one 
trying to sew paper together

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and getting my finger stuck in the needle.

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Like sewing right through my finger.

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But I was just like, "I want to bind my book."

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"It's going to be the thing. 
I'm going to make it perfect."

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They did call me...I don't know if it 
was "The Demolisher" or "The Hellion."

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[LAUGHS]

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Whenever I imagine a painter,

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it's someone who is very composed--

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kind of like a "lady painter."

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But, I feel like a car mechanic.

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My mom is a master seamstress.

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She can make really beautiful things.

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But she was so caught up in a 100-hour work week

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that she always does things for bare function.

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It makes for a lot of precarity.

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So none of the things that you build tend to last.

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I'm trying to break that cycle 
and teach my nephews and nieces

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to think of themselves as part 
of longer cycles behind them

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and long cycles before them--

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that every choice that we make is predicated 
by the people we hope to love in the future

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and the people we love in the past.

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It's always within your grasp

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to make something new.

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It's exhausting,

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but limitless.