Weekly Artist Feature | Firelei Báez

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Firelei Báez (b. 1981) is a Dominican-born, New York-based visual artist renowned for her intricate paintings, drawings, and installations that reimagine diasporic histories and challenge colonial narratives. Born in Santiago de los Caballeros to a Dominican mother and Haitian father, Báez spent her early years navigating the cultural complexities of Hispaniola. 

Click here to learn more about the artist →

Her work draws upon a wide range of African diasporic histories, reworking visual imagery from sources such as Dominican folklore, 18th-century taxonomy, and the Black Panther movement to reclaim power and imagine new possibilities for the future. Through her dynamic visual language, Báez invites viewers to reconsider historical narratives and embrace the fluidity of identity, offering a transformative perspective on the complexities of the African diaspora.

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Highlights: 

• Studied at The Cooper Union School of Art in New York, earning her B.F.A. in 2004, and received her M.F.A. from Hunter College in 2010. She also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2008.
• Awarded the United States Artists Fellowship and the Soros Arts Fellowship in 2019 in recognition of her dynamic contributions to contemporary art and cultural discourse.
• Received the College Art Association’s Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work in 2018, and was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize in 2017.
• Báez has participated in several prestigious residencies, including at Hauser & Wirth Somerset (UK), Headlands Center for the Arts (CA), the Joan Mitchell Center (LA), and the Fine Arts Work Center (MA), among others.
• Her work is held in the permanent collections of major institutions such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.

Click the link to learn more about Firelei Báez and her work through her Instagram and website. Watch this video!

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Current Exhibitions

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Silver Linings: Celebrating the Spelman Art Collection Group Exhibition - Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, Florida USA (Feb 4 - July 6, 2025)

This exhibition highlights the works of masters, pioneers, and trailblazers who anchor the collection of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art. The nearly forty works in the exhibition represent a variety of mediums and techniques including painting, drawing, sculpture, mixed-media collage, prints, and photographs.

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Black Earth Rising Group Exhibition - Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland USA (May 18 - Sept 21 2025)

Black Earth Rising explores the splendor of nature through paintings, sculptures, films, and works on paper by some of today’s most celebrated artists of African diasporic, Latin American, and Native identity. 

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“Firelei Báez” - Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA (June 14 – Sept 21, 2025)

A traveling exhibition from ICA Boston, offering a holistic understanding of Báez’s complex and profoundly moving body of work.

Selected Past Exhibitions

• “Firelei Báez” – Institute of Contemporary Art Watershed, Boston, MA (2021)
• “Firelei Báez” – Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2019)
• “Firelei Báez: Joy Out of Fire” – The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY (2018)
• “Firelei Báez: To See Beyond Its Walls (and access the places that lie beyond)” – Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO (2017)
• “Firelei Báez: Bloodlines” – Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL (2015)

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Artworks

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