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Firelei Báez, ICA Watershed: Boston Harbor Shipyard and Marina | East Boston, MA

Past exhibition
3 July - 6 September 2021
  • Overview
  • Installation Views
  • Press
Overview
Firelei Báez, ICA Watershed, Boston Harbor Shipyard and Marina | East Boston, MA

In summer 2021, the ICA Watershed will feature a newly commissioned, monumental sculpture by acclaimed artist Firelei Báez. In her largest sculptural installation to date, the artist reimagines the archeological ruins of the Sans-Souci Palace in Haiti as though they were revealed in East Boston after the sea receded from the Watershed floor. The Watershed’s location—in a working shipyard and as a trade site and point of entry and home for immigrants over decades—provides a pivotal point of reference. Báez embeds Sans-Souci within the geological layers of Boston, where histories of revolution and independence are integral to the city’s identity. This site-specific installation will invite visitors to traverse passageways and travel through time, engaging with streams of influence and interconnectedness. The work’s intricately painted architectural surfaces include symbols of healing and resistance, patterning drawn from West African indigo printing traditions (later used in the American South), and sea growths native to Caribbean waters. Báez’s sculpture points to the centuries-long exchanges of ideas and influence between Europe, the African continent, and the Americas.

 

Báez was born in 1981 in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, to a Dominican mother and a father of Haitian descent. Her upbringing between Hispaniola’s two countries, which have a longstanding history of tension predicated on ethnic difference, informs her concerns with the politics of place and heritage. She currently lives and works in New York City. 

 

— Curatorial text courtesy the ICA Watershed

  • ICA Boston Watershed
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Installation Views
  • Firelei Báez, To breathe full and free: a declaration, a re-visioning, a correction (19°36′16.9″N 72°13′07.0″W, 42° 21′48.762″ N 71°1′59.628″ W), 2021. Installation view, ICA Watershed, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York. Photo by Chuck Choi. © Firelei Báez

    Firelei Báez, To breathe full and free: a declaration, a re-visioning, a correction (19°36′16.9″N 72°13′07.0″W, 42° 21′48.762″ N 71°1′59.628″ W), 2021. Installation view, ICA Watershed, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York. Photo by Chuck Choi. © Firelei Báez

  • Firelei Báez, To breathe full and free: a declaration, a re-visioning, a correction (19°36′16.9″N 72°13′07.0″W, 42° 21′48.762″ N 71°1′59.628″ W), 2021. Installation view, ICA Watershed, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York. Photo by Chuck Choi. © Firelei Báez

    Firelei Báez, To breathe full and free: a declaration, a re-visioning, a correction (19°36′16.9″N 72°13′07.0″W, 42° 21′48.762″ N 71°1′59.628″ W), 2021. Installation view, ICA Watershed, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York. Photo by Chuck Choi. © Firelei Báez

  • Installation view of Firelei Báez, ICA Watershed, Boston, 2021. Photo: Chris Cardoza. © Firelei Báez. Courtesy ICA Watershed, Boston.

    Installation view of Firelei Báez, ICA Watershed, Boston, 2021. Photo: Chris Cardoza. © Firelei Báez. Courtesy ICA Watershed, Boston.

Press
  • Artist Explores History Of Indigo In Exhibit Inspired By Haiti

    Cristela Guerra, WBUR Boston, July 14, 2021
  • In a monumental sculpture, the artist Firelei Báez reimagines the archaeological ruins of the Sans-Souci Palace in Haiti. The architecture of lurching walls and archways surges from the “seafloor” of the ICA Watershed.Credit...Firelei Báez and James Cohan; Chuck Choi

    In Boston, Art That Rises From the Deep

    Siddhartha Mitter, New York Times, July 2, 2021

Related artist

  • Firelei Báez

    Firelei Báez

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