Yes, we just announced another one of Dominican artist Firelei Báez’s exhibitions, “Trust Memory over History.” This is a new one! Báez’s major solo exhibition in the United Kingdom, “Sueño de la Madrugada (A Midnight’s Dream),” will be on view from June 28 to September 8, 2024, at South London Gallery (SLG).

According to Hauser & Wirth, this show stems from her engagement with the site and London archives, with work produced during her time spent in Somerset. The exhibition is organized by the first cohort of New Curators with the SLG team, which is a paid year-long curatorial training program for 12 individuals.

Description: Sueño de la Madrugada (A Midnight’s Dream) is Firelei Báez’s first solo exhibition in the UK. Known for her striking paintings, she also makes drawings, installations, and sculptures. Báez takes over the South London Gallery with new immersive installations and large abstract paintings. She uses rich colours, elements from nature, sound and light to reflect on complex colonial histories.  

The exhibition is a journey through vibrant spaces where ecology, power, and resistance interact.  

Through research and critical engagement with archives, Báez examines the legacies of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. For her, myths and folklore are tools of cultural and spiritual resistance. Sueño de la Madrugada (A Midnight’s Dream) shares stories of the Ciguapa, a mythological figure from Dominican folklore; Atabey, the Taino mother earth spirit; Oshun, the Yoruba god of rivers, love, beauty, and prosperity; and Erzili, a spirit of love from Haitian Vodou. These mythical figures invite viewers to reconsider what it means to be human, and to imagine freedom from earthly constraints. 

 “My works are propositions, meant to create alternate pasts and potential futures, questioning history and culture in order to provide a space for reassessing the present.” — Firelei Báez 

Firelei Báez (b. 1981, Dominican Republic) received an M.F.A. from Hunter College, a B.F.A. from the Cooper Union’s School of Art, and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In 2024, Báez will be the subject of her first major US survey at the I.C.A. Boston, curated by Eva Respini. Her work has been presented in many significant international exhibitions, including the inaugural installation of the I.C.A. Watershed, Boston (2021), curated by Eva Respini, now on view at The Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas, and The Milk of Dreams at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022), curated by Cecilia Alemani. Recent solo presentations of Báez’s work include exhibitions at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek; Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; and Pérez Art Museum Miami. 

For more information, see https://www.southlondongallery.org/journal/2023-2024-programme/

Also see https://www.hauserwirth.com/residencies/firelei-baez/

[Shown above: Firelei Báez, “Fruta fina, fruta extraña (Lee Monument),” 2022. Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, New York.]