Step Into the Worlds of Dominican-born Artist Firelei Báez—On View This Summer at the Des Moines Art Center
Portrait of Firelei Báez ©Firelei Báez Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Photo: Amilcar Navarro
Des Moines, IA – Spanning the Art Center’s Anna K. Meredith, W.T. & Edna Dahl, and I. M. Pei galleries, “Firelei Báez” is the Des Moines Art Center’s latest exhibition featuring more than 30 works and showcasing nearly two decades of the artist’s paintings, drawings, and multi-media installations that transport viewers through time and space, creating opportunities for wonder, reflection, and enlightenment.
On view June 13 through September 21, 2025, “Firelei Báez” explores the multilayered legacy of colonial histories and the African diaspora in the Caribbean and beyond. Báez, a Dominican Republic-born, New York City-based artist, draws on the disciplines of anthropology, geography, folklore, fantasy, science fiction, and social history to unsettle categories of race, gender, and nationality. Her paintings feature complex and layered uses of pattern, decoration, and saturated color, often overlaid on reproductions of archival imagery such as colonial maps or construction plans for colonial architecture.
Firelei Báez ’s work uncovers the layered legacy of race, gender, and identity.
“The Des Moines Art Center is proud to host one of the 21st century’s most groundbreaking artists, Firelei Báez. Báez’s practice entices the eye and engages the senses at the same time that it challenges the mind and provokes daunting questions around agency and freedom, prejudice and state sponsored violence,” said Kelly Baum, John and Mary Pappajohn Director. “Such an exhibition reflects our intention to serve as a public forum for discussion and our strategic ambition of ‘bringing the world to Iowa, and Iowa to the world.’ We thank the artist and our institutional partners for collaborating with us on its Des Moines venue.”
The exhibition is installed in 2000 square feet of the Art Center, occupying galleries in three of the museum’s distinctive buildings. Opening the exhibition is one of Báez’s early and formative works, “Can I Pass? Introducing the Paper Bag to the Fan Test for the Month of July” (2011), in which she made a series of 31 daily self-portraits that are displayed like a calendar. Each silhouette is a unique pose with the artist’s internal state readable only through the addition of her expressive eyes. The title references the racist and widespread 20th century practice of using a brown paper bag as a color test to admit or deny people entry into social functions based on the tone of one’s skin color. The flesh tone of each portrait matches the artist’s forearm for each day depicted, memorializing the passage of time through the lightening and darkening of Báez’s skin.
Multisensory Installations That Transform the Museum Experience
At the end of the Anna K. Meredith Gallery, viewers will find themselves immersed in the multi-sensory installation “A Drexcyen chronocommons (To win the war you fought it sideways)” (2019). In this room-sized work, Báez creates a grotto-like space using perforated blue tarp, a material often used as shelter and refuge following natural disasters. She envelops the space under a star map of the night of the onset of the Haitian Revolution and hand-perforated blue tarps, casting spots of light onto surfaces painted with significant symbols of the Black diaspora.
Firelei Báez (Dominican, born 1981) A Drexcyen chronocommons (To win the war you fought it sideways), 2019 Two paintings, hand-painted wooden frame, perforated tarp, printed mesh, handmade paper over found objects, plants, and books Courtesy the Joyner/Giuffrida Collection,San Francisco Image courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, New York. Photo by Phoebe d’Heurle. © Firelei Báez
Upon entering the W.T. and Edna Dahl Galleries, the viewer will see a gallery filled with portraits representing Báez’s multi-decade exploration of femme identity. The figures in these works are depicted with intricate patterning based on tattoos and Persian miniature painting, exuberantly coiled and curly hair, and elaborate tignons (a type of headscarf first mandated under a repressive 18th century law that was transformed into a personal expression of beauty and symbol of resistance.)
Des Moines Art Center Acquires New Work by Firelei Báez
The exhibition concludes in the Cowles Sculpture Court of the I. M. Pei building. There visitors will experience a work titled “once we have torn shit down, we will inevitably see more and see differently and feel a new sense of wanting and being and becoming)” (2014), a massive archway that celebrates the Sans-Souci palace in Haiti, once inhabited by Henri Christophe, a leader of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), and “A most curious manifestation (or a boat sailing the great rapids of time)” (2024), a recent acquisition to the Art Center’s collections, purchased with funds from the Coffin Fine Arts Trust; Nathan Emory Coffin Collection of the Des Moines Art Center. When the exhibition departs Des Moines in September, this incisive, resplendent painting will remain, serving to cement the relationship between the artist, her work, and the residents of Des Moines in perpetuity. It will be a piece from which generations of residents and students will continue to learn. From beginning to end, as they traverse decades and places, viewers will follow an artistic and historical journey that mirrors the arc of Baez’s own career.
The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue, available in the Art Center’s Museum Shop, featuring pieces in the exhibition, works from throughout Báez’s career, and essays from Leticia Alvarado, Katherine Brinson, Jessica Bell Brown, Julie Crooks, Daniella Rose King, Eva Respini, Hallie Ringle, and Katy Siegel.
Events and Guided Tours at the Des Moines Art Center
Firelei Báez Exhibit Exclusive Guided Tour for JEFAS Magazine!
Tuesday, June 10 | 1:45 – 3:30 pm
Free; Exclusive for the JEFAS community.
Limited Space: Sign up here!
1:45 – 2 pm | Gather in the Harriet S. and J. Locke Macomber Lobby
2 – 2:30 pm | Tour open portions of the exhibition led by Senior Curator Laura Burkhalter
2:30 – 3:30 pm | Gather in the Art Center Café for networking. La mie desserts and beverages available for purchase.
3:30 – 4 pm | Tour Art Center galleries on your own if desired
Opening Celebration
Thursday, June 12 | 5 – 7 pm
Anna K. Meredith Gallery and throughout the museum
Free; no reservations required.
Firelei Báez in Conversation with John and Mary Pappajohn Director Kelly Baum
Friday, June 13 | 6:30 pm
Levitt Auditorium
Free; reservations required.
Guided Tours
Saturdays, June 21, July 12, August 9, September 13
1 – 2 pm
Meet in the Harriet S. and J. Locke Macomber Lobby
Free; no reservations required.
Gallery Talk with Associate Curator Elizabeth Gollnick
Sunday, July 20 | 1:30 pm
Anna K. Meredith Gallery and throughout the museum
Free; reservations required.
“Firelei Báez” is organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston and Eva Respini, Deputy Director and Director of Curatorial Programs, Vancouver Art Gallery (former Barbara Lee Chief Curator, ICA/Boston), with Tess Bachi Haas, Assistant Curator.
Major support for “Firelei Báez” is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, Karen and Brian Conway, David and Jocelyne DeNunzio, Mathieu O. Gaulin, The Kotzubei-Beckmann Family Philanthropic Fund, and Lise and Jeffrey Wilks, and an anonymous donor.
Additional support for the presentation of the Des Moines Art Center’s exhibition is provided by the Harriet S. and J. Locke Macomber Art Center Fund, Iowa Tourism Office and Iowa Arts Council, both a part of the Iowa Economic Development Authority, and Laurie Wolf and Jeff Freude.
