Thu Dec 18 10:40:00 UTC 2025: News Article:

Firelei Báez Exhibition at MCA Chicago Challenges Monolithic Histories

Chicago, IL – December 18, 2025 – The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) is currently hosting a powerful mid-career survey of Dominican-born artist Firelei Báez, showcasing her complex and layered exploration of history, culture, and society within the Americas and the African diaspora. Originally organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, the MCA exhibition, curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates, Cecilia González Godino, and Iris Colburn, is a timely intervention amidst ongoing attempts to censor discussions of slavery and racism.

Báez’s work, encompassing drawings, collages, paintings, and installations, demonstrates the multi-faceted nature of historical narratives. Her pieces are rich with symbolism and tactile textures, often featuring painted figures embellished with tattoos and ornate head coverings, overlaid on canvases, archival documents, and other materials. Her monumental piece, “Man Without a Country (aka. anthropophagist wading in the Artibonite River),” exemplifies this approach, composed of 225 collages atop deaccessioned book pages, effectively rewriting dominant historical texts with alternative perspectives.

A recurring motif in Báez’s work is the gaze of women. Many pieces feature profile views of women, rendered in vibrant swirls of color, whose eyes meet the viewer’s gaze, challenging the traditional objectification of women in Western art. Many figures do not have mouths, possibly alluding to stories and voices that have been historically silenced.

The exhibition’s centerpiece is the immersive installation “A Drexcyen Chronocommons (To win the war you fought it sideways).” This tranquil yet evocative space, adorned with blue perforated fabric, tropical plants, and paintings of exiled Haitian Queen Marie-Louise Coidavid and her daughters, references Drexciya, a Detroit electronic duo known for imagining a mythical underwater race born from the unborn children of enslaved African women thrown overboard during the Middle Passage.

Báez’s use of archival materials extends to “The Earth That Remains,” a monumental canvas where a schematic is overlaid with a figure transforming into natural elements, illustrating the futility of rigid categorization and understanding of the world.

The Firelei Báez exhibition is a triumph, offering a vital and timely exploration of history and identity. The exhibition runs through May 31, 2026, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

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