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Firelei Báez: An Open Horizon (or) the Stillness of a Wound | Art21 "New York Close Up"

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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 would 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 Hellian."
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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.
Title:
Firelei Báez: An Open Horizon (or) the Stillness of a Wound | Art21 "New York Close Up"
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
Art21
Project:
"New York Close Up" series
Duration:
08:05

English subtitles

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