Firelei Báez Remaps American History with Jellyfish at Hauser & Wirth

Firelei Báez's solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in Chelsea features a large-scale painting that reimagines Emma Willard's 1845 wall map of American history. Báez overlays a milky white jellyfish onto Willard's tree-like map, with tentacles covering dates like 'Columbus's Discovery 1492' and 'Confederacy begins.' The work, titled 'Not even unalterable limitations (or a transformational topology for remembering Willard's Chronographer of American History),' erupts with color and protrusions of legs and feet that blot out colonial references. Báez, who was born in the Dominican Republic, has long worked with archives to challenge linear history. The exhibition also includes a towering bronze sculpture named 'Ayida,' representing a ciguepas, a female trickster from Dominican folklore. Báez's practice remaps world stories to offer new understandings of history and humanity.