Can fabric and collage dismantle colonial history? Firelei Báez makes a breathtaking case

A diaspora in collage

Firelei Báez, Man Without a Country (aka anthropophagist wading in the Artibonite River), 2014-15. Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston; Gift of Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté. Image courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, New York. © FireleiBáez. Photo: Oriol Tarridas.

Báez was born in the Dominican Republic, but her work considers the history of the island of Hispaniola—now divided into two countries, Haiti and the Dominican Republic—as a whole. The title of “Man Without a Country (aka anthropophagist wading in the Artibonite River),” a mammoth work comprising 225 collaged book pages, references this directly. Many Haitians (and Dominicans of Haitian descent) are not guaranteed citizenship or its rights in the Dominican Republic.

Báez contemplates the legacies of colonial rule across the Americas and the African diaspora, in the Caribbean and beyond. “My works are speculative propositions,” her quote reads at the exhibition entrance, “meant to create alternate pasts and potential futures, questioning history and culture in order to provide a space for reassessing the present.”

“A Drexcyen Chronocommons” brims with the iconography of Báez’s work: tignons, or knotted scarves used to cover the hair; West African indigo print patterns; chains; panthers, reminiscent of the Black Panther Party; hair picks; raised fists, recalling the Black Power fist. These symbols recur throughout this breathtaking exhibition, drawing its pieces—and its viewers—closer together.