Dominican artist Firelei Báez is one of six contemporary artists to compete for the Artes Mundi 9 prize. This is the United Kingdom’s leading international contemporary art prize, now in the ninth edition of the biannual award. Báez is competing against Dineo Seshee Bopape (South Africa), Meiro Koizumi (Japan), Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (Puerto Rico), Praphakar Pachpute (India) and Carrie Mae Weems (USA).
The Dominican artist’s work focuses on wide-ranging diaspora narratives, and the artist addresses questions surrounding issues such as migration, women’s identity and future potentials. Her work challenges culturally predetermined ethnic stereotypes. Critiques say her exuberantly colorful paintings combine symbolic cues that span from lavish textiles and wall coverings with colonial-era floral motifs to calligraphic patterns, hair textures, feathered headdresses and beaded jewellery. In 2017 she was shortlisted for Pinchuk Art Foundation’s Future Generation Art Prize, exhibited at the 57th Venice Biennale and in 2019 she was granted a Soros Arts Fellowship.
Born in 1981 in the Dominican Republic, Báez lives and works in New York. She has had solo exhibitions in 2019 at the Mennello Museum of Art, Orlando, FL; Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; and the Modern Window at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Her monumental outdoor sculpture, 19.604692°N 72.218596°W, is currently included in En Plein Air, the 2019 High Line Art exhibition. Her major 2015 solo exhibition Bloodlines was organized by the Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL and travelled to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA.
The winner of the Cardiff-based Artes Mundi prize will be announced in January 2021 during a four-month exhibition from October 2020 to February 2021 at National Museum Cardiff located in Cathays Park, Cardiff. Admission is free.
As an important arbiter of cultural exchange between the UK and international communities, Artes Mundi seeks to bring together a major biennial exhibition of international contemporary art by some of the most relevant artistic voices of our time. It is the UK’s largest contemporary art prize with £40,000 prize money.
Artes Mundi 9 selectors and jury members are Cosmin Costinas, Executive Director and Curator of Para Site, Hong Kong and Artistic Director of Kathmandu Triennale 2020; Elvira Dyangani-Ose, Director of The Showroom gallery in London; and Rachel Kent, Chief Curator at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia.
Read more:
Artes Mundi
25 September 2019