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Hauser & Wirth

Firelei Báez at Hauser & Wirth

Photo: Installation view, ‘Firelei Báez. The fact that it amazes me does not mean I relinquish it,’ Hauser& Wirth Downtown Los Angeles, 13 September 2024–5 January 2025. © Firelei Báez. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Keith Lubow.
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“I’ve never seen something more fierce than a palm tree surviving hurricane wind,” artist Firelei Báez says. “They are the only thing that will survive it because they are flexible enough to just ride the wind.” In the galleries at Hauser & Wirth, a massive bronze figure perches on one bent knee as its trunk transforms into a palm tree whose treetop lashes back as if windswept. With this piece, the artist (who grew up in the Caribbean and lives in New York) introduces us to core themes in her oeuvre: transformation, fantasy, resilience, and stories from the Caribbean diaspora. 

This singular sculpture anchors the room of several large-scale paintings, each using various archival maps and documents (that are reprinted on canvas) as their ground. Atop these, Báez paints her transforming figures, lifelike and yet fantastical. Their upper halves often erupt into a spray of flowers or feathers while their skin is given a marbled, translucent quality, highlighting the aqueous fluidity of each form, which the artist attempts to capture “mid-transformation.”

While Báez begins her pieces with specific documents and Caribbean histories and theories, she never wants the works to feel didactic to the viewer. “Together we make something far more complex and far more nuanced,” she explains.

Photo: Installation view, ‘Firelei Báez. The fact that it amazes me does not mean I relinquish it,’ Hauser& Wirth Downtown Los Angeles, 13 September 2024–5 January 2025. © Firelei Báez. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Keith Lubow.

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