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Lot Essay
Ebullient, vibrant, and insightful, Untitled (Colonization in America, Visual History Wall Map, Prepared by Civic Education Service) is a magisterial display of Firelei Báez’s exceptional technical skill and compelling critical praxis. The monumental painting is a continuation of her artistic project exploring the legacies of history and the power of the Western archives while challenging long-held misrepresentations of the so-called New World. Báez brilliantly bridges abstraction with figuration in the present work, painting dense swirls of vivid polychrome feathers in a constellation of dynamic movement across the printed canvas of an antiquated map depicting the European colonization of North America, published by the Civic Education Service in 1966. She obscures and overturns existing historiographical narratives with imagery inspired from the Caribbean myths, folklore, and traditions around which she grew up. Drawing from what Jenny Sharpe describes as the “intangible quality of affects, dreams, spirits, and visions that art and literature introduce into material archives,” Báez is able to “disrupt, bend, and break the categories of archival knowledge and their accompanying notion of ‘the human’” (J. Sharpe, Immaterial Archives: An African Diaspora Poetics of Loss, Evanston, IL, 2020, p. 3).
Báez paints a bountiful variety of spotted, striped, and speckled feathers arranged in concentric rings across her monumental canvas, spanning more than nine feet in height. Báez creates her arrangement of feathers with meticulous detail, her minuscule brush elaborating every stray wispy white barb from each feather. Appraised altogether, the composition forms into a unified, nebulous form punctuated with striking shots of color which create a profound sense of free movement. The layers of crimson, burnt orange, electric pink, and bright yellow penetrate the organic autumnal palette of russets and browns. The scholar Marta Fernández Campa notes of Báez’s use of color how “the vibrant chromatic range of Báez’s artwork expands its reach beyond the often stereotypical representations of a colorful Caribbean that remains common in media and touristic portrayals of the region. The use of color in the paintings is disruptive of any definitional limitations and conveys instead a generative energy” (M. F. Campa, “Fluid Forms of Memory and Power in the Work of Firelei Báez,” in Firelei Báez: Trust Over Memory, exh. cat., Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, 2023, p. 38).
Báez’s use of support is an important part of her artistic practice. She selects archival material, finding obsolete didactic maps, charts, and book pages over which she paints, obscuring the original document. Báez notes that in choosing her supports, “the perfect diagram for me is one that I can immediately be irreverent towards. One that has so much information that it becomes clear that my time and its time are so obviously out of sync. One where you can immediately start the conversation about the discourse between the times and spaces that created both of us. The pages become almost points of navigation” (F. Báez, quoted in M. U. Seeberg, “Maybe We Can Even the Playing Field a Bit: Firelei Báez and Mathias Ussing Seeberg in Conversation,” in op. cit., p. 23). For the present work, Báez selected a pedological map published in 1966 depicting a sanitized version of European colonization which obfuscates the presence of indigenous peoples. Amid Báez’s brushstrokes, fragments of the original text—Roger Williams, Mayflower Compact, Virginia Dare, John Smith, Jamestown—can be made out. The artist conceives of her work as a palimpsest, in the most original sense of the word. She leans on the manuscript tradition of recycling parchment by scraping off old ink before writing new texts. While mostly obscured, fragments of the original text can still be perceived, leaving layers of material history upon the page which the reader can either ignore or unearth. “To read a palimpsest, you have to willfully ignore data and hyper focus. We’re not equipped to fully perceive that much data” (F. Báez, quoted in ibid., p. 24).
Contemporaneously to the present work’s creation, the artist was visiting Puglia while the 2021-2022 Visual Arts Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Báez recalls having a powerful dream which caused her to awaken with “almost happy” tears: “It was a dream of being moored at sea and this feathered creature, which seemed very ancient and that I can never figure out how to properly depict, was essentially rescuing me with expanded wings, [saying] ‘I will never abandon you at sea again’,” the artist describes. “The reason that I woke up with happy tears was because the dream didn’t seem directed at me but at all my ancestors who crossed the Atlantic Ocean willingly and unwillingly” (F. Báez, quoted in A. Sansom, “‘There Is So Much More to See If We Are Brave Enough:’ Firelei Báez on Mining Memory, Myth, and Colonial Archives,” Artnet News, 25 December 2023, online, [accessed 21 October 2025]). The ambiguous feathered form here relates to the feathered creature of her dreams, establishing a poignant connection between the artist and her ancestors.
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Báez locates a further connection between her feather motif and powerful ancestral and cultural connections, alluding to the material of Manto Tupinambá, sensuous ceremonial capes woven with red Ibis feathers made by the indigenous Tupinambá people of Brazil. Until recently, all of the only eleven extant capes resided in European museum collections, where they inspired generations of European artists. “I was looking at the work of Giacomo Balla, Klimt, and Hilma af Klint, and thinking about how color almost becomes a way of depicting an interiority that is so boundless that it can become the cosmos, and so sensuous that it’s all encompassing,” notes Báez. “If you think of Max Ernst’s The Robing of the Bride (1940), you almost see his configuration of an original 15th-century illustration” (F. Báez, quoted in ibid.).
The artist also places her explosive feather paintings into the visual tradition of masks, particularly from diasporic Mardi Gras and carnival traditions. For these works, “it’s abstract and it’s figurative all at once, and there’s so much that could be projected onto it. But for me the main idea was all the adaptive languages, the acrobatic efforts that we have to adapt to navigate” (F. Báez, quoted in C. Whyte, “Firelei Báez: The Poetics of Opacity,” Art Papers, Spring 2021, online [accessed 21 October 2025]). Incorporating the feather motif into her practice, Báez elaborates upon the themes which she has addressed across her career, pushing the boundaries of what is legible and controlled and highlighting dominant representations of identity. Exploring and conveying poignant critiques on orthodox historiographical processes and representing the failures of the archives, Báez draws upon alternative histories—myths, folklore, oral tradition, and her own dreams—to advance, disrupt and challenge the epistemic violence committed against indigenous and other subaltern communities. Untitled accommodates and expands this praxis, fascinatingly integrating the Brazilian indigenous tradition with her experience of Mardi Gras and her own dreams into a ravishing painterly tour-de-force.
Báez paints a bountiful variety of spotted, striped, and speckled feathers arranged in concentric rings across her monumental canvas, spanning more than nine feet in height. Báez creates her arrangement of feathers with meticulous detail, her minuscule brush elaborating every stray wispy white barb from each feather. Appraised altogether, the composition forms into a unified, nebulous form punctuated with striking shots of color which create a profound sense of free movement. The layers of crimson, burnt orange, electric pink, and bright yellow penetrate the organic autumnal palette of russets and browns. The scholar Marta Fernández Campa notes of Báez’s use of color how “the vibrant chromatic range of Báez’s artwork expands its reach beyond the often stereotypical representations of a colorful Caribbean that remains common in media and touristic portrayals of the region. The use of color in the paintings is disruptive of any definitional limitations and conveys instead a generative energy” (M. F. Campa, “Fluid Forms of Memory and Power in the Work of Firelei Báez,” in Firelei Báez: Trust Over Memory, exh. cat., Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, 2023, p. 38).
Báez’s use of support is an important part of her artistic practice. She selects archival material, finding obsolete didactic maps, charts, and book pages over which she paints, obscuring the original document. Báez notes that in choosing her supports, “the perfect diagram for me is one that I can immediately be irreverent towards. One that has so much information that it becomes clear that my time and its time are so obviously out of sync. One where you can immediately start the conversation about the discourse between the times and spaces that created both of us. The pages become almost points of navigation” (F. Báez, quoted in M. U. Seeberg, “Maybe We Can Even the Playing Field a Bit: Firelei Báez and Mathias Ussing Seeberg in Conversation,” in op. cit., p. 23). For the present work, Báez selected a pedological map published in 1966 depicting a sanitized version of European colonization which obfuscates the presence of indigenous peoples. Amid Báez’s brushstrokes, fragments of the original text—Roger Williams, Mayflower Compact, Virginia Dare, John Smith, Jamestown—can be made out. The artist conceives of her work as a palimpsest, in the most original sense of the word. She leans on the manuscript tradition of recycling parchment by scraping off old ink before writing new texts. While mostly obscured, fragments of the original text can still be perceived, leaving layers of material history upon the page which the reader can either ignore or unearth. “To read a palimpsest, you have to willfully ignore data and hyper focus. We’re not equipped to fully perceive that much data” (F. Báez, quoted in ibid., p. 24).
Contemporaneously to the present work’s creation, the artist was visiting Puglia while the 2021-2022 Visual Arts Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Báez recalls having a powerful dream which caused her to awaken with “almost happy” tears: “It was a dream of being moored at sea and this feathered creature, which seemed very ancient and that I can never figure out how to properly depict, was essentially rescuing me with expanded wings, [saying] ‘I will never abandon you at sea again’,” the artist describes. “The reason that I woke up with happy tears was because the dream didn’t seem directed at me but at all my ancestors who crossed the Atlantic Ocean willingly and unwillingly” (F. Báez, quoted in A. Sansom, “‘There Is So Much More to See If We Are Brave Enough:’ Firelei Báez on Mining Memory, Myth, and Colonial Archives,” Artnet News, 25 December 2023, online, [accessed 21 October 2025]). The ambiguous feathered form here relates to the feathered creature of her dreams, establishing a poignant connection between the artist and her ancestors.
SHAPE \* MERGEFORMAT
Báez locates a further connection between her feather motif and powerful ancestral and cultural connections, alluding to the material of Manto Tupinambá, sensuous ceremonial capes woven with red Ibis feathers made by the indigenous Tupinambá people of Brazil. Until recently, all of the only eleven extant capes resided in European museum collections, where they inspired generations of European artists. “I was looking at the work of Giacomo Balla, Klimt, and Hilma af Klint, and thinking about how color almost becomes a way of depicting an interiority that is so boundless that it can become the cosmos, and so sensuous that it’s all encompassing,” notes Báez. “If you think of Max Ernst’s The Robing of the Bride (1940), you almost see his configuration of an original 15th-century illustration” (F. Báez, quoted in ibid.).
The artist also places her explosive feather paintings into the visual tradition of masks, particularly from diasporic Mardi Gras and carnival traditions. For these works, “it’s abstract and it’s figurative all at once, and there’s so much that could be projected onto it. But for me the main idea was all the adaptive languages, the acrobatic efforts that we have to adapt to navigate” (F. Báez, quoted in C. Whyte, “Firelei Báez: The Poetics of Opacity,” Art Papers, Spring 2021, online [accessed 21 October 2025]). Incorporating the feather motif into her practice, Báez elaborates upon the themes which she has addressed across her career, pushing the boundaries of what is legible and controlled and highlighting dominant representations of identity. Exploring and conveying poignant critiques on orthodox historiographical processes and representing the failures of the archives, Báez draws upon alternative histories—myths, folklore, oral tradition, and her own dreams—to advance, disrupt and challenge the epistemic violence committed against indigenous and other subaltern communities. Untitled accommodates and expands this praxis, fascinatingly integrating the Brazilian indigenous tradition with her experience of Mardi Gras and her own dreams into a ravishing painterly tour-de-force.