At the Des Moines Art Center, Firelei Baez’s hung perforated blue cloth to create an immersive, light-dappled installation called “A Drexcyen chronocommons (To win the war you fought it sideways).”(Photo: Michael Morain)
By Michael Morain
Last summer the Des Moines Art Center’s big show, “Hurricane Season,” featured artwork by six artists with Caribbean roots. And now there’s something of a spin-off: A solo show by one of those six artists, Firelei Baez, swept into the galleries this past weekend and is forecast to stay through Sept. 21.
It originated last summer at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art and moved to the Vancouver Art Gallery before it arrived here, where it fills the Anna K. Meredith Gallery and a portion of the Pei Building. It’s a big show with more than 30 paintings, drawings and sculptural installations — and a lot to unpack.
According to the Art Center’s promotional materials, the Dominican-born artist’s work explores “the legacy of colonial histories and the African diaspora in the Caribbean and beyond,” drawing on “anthropology, geography, folklore, fantasy, science fiction and social history to unsettle categories of race, gender and nationality.”
I have to admit, that sounded a little unwieldy when I first heard about it, like a dozen categories from “Jeopardy!” and the Dewey Decimal System all rolled into one. But it’s also beautiful, and it makes more sense if you see it in person, as I did during a preview with curator Elizabeth Gollnick, who plans to lead a gallery talk at 1:30 p.m. July 20. Other free guided tours are set for 1 p.m. this Saturday, July 12, Aug. 9 and Sept. 13.
With Gollnick last week, we started with several big canvases that feature splashy colors over reproductions of antique maps of the Caribbean trade winds, for example, or a U.S. Marine hospital in New Orleans. Baez partially covered the original images with her own bold handiwork as if to say, “Not so fast. That’s only part of the story.” Some of her imaginative additions feature people, horses and crashing waves. In one painting, which the Art Center purchased, a turbulent burst of gold and blue paint erupts across an outdated map of tropical diseases.
Another series riffs on La Ciguapa, a spooky half-woman, half-palm-tree creature from Dominican folklore. Parents sometimes conjure her when they’re trying to get their kids to behave, but Baez sees her as a symbol of female empowerment. The story reminded me of “Where the Wild Things Are”by Maurice Sendak.
A few of the Ciguapa portraits lead into an immersive grotto, a similar but larger version of the one Baez made out of FEMA tarps for last year’s “Hurricane Season.” This time, lightweight blue cloth hangs from the ceiling and walls, casting a blue glow over rainbow portraits of a Haitian queen and her daughter. Light dapples the space through holes in the cloth.
Baez is “thinking about waves and the stars above or seen from below the water,” Gollnick said.
Clearly, the artist thinks about lots of other things, too. Gollnick said Baez is a voracious reader, with a particular interest in science fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler and other women writers. She’s fascinated by archways and portals through time and space, which pop up throughout the exhibition.
Baez, who is based in New York, spent 11 days in Des Moines before the opening. She visited Pella and Fairfield, to see the Maharishi Vedic Observatory, and spent some time making new artwork in one of the Art Center’s studios.
“She keeps evolving. Her work keeps changing,” Gollnick said. “That constant creativity is part of the way she thinks.”
Before her arrival, Baez chose several works from the Art Center’s permanent collection to display with her own sculptures in the Pei Building. One notable pairing highlights the Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu’s striking bronze “Water Woman,”seen through the archway in a crumbling wall Baez made to replicate the mansion of a Haitian revolutionary (pictured). It looks like it’s ready to topple, like the status quo.
Elsewhere in the museum, a separate but related exhibition features Haitian artwork on loan from the Waterloo Center for the Arts. Gollnick plans to lead a gallery talk about that show at 5:30 p.m. Friday.
