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Artworks
Untitled (United States Marine Hospital), 2019
Oil and acrylic on printed canvas
100 x 127 1/2 x 1 3/4 in
254 x 323.9 x 4.4 cm
254 x 323.9 x 4.4 cm
Sold
Further images
In this work, Firelei Báez overlays cresting, calligraphic gesture onto a WPA-commissioned architectural diagram of the United States Marine Hospital in New Orleans, one of many historic infrastructural sites threatened...
In this work, Firelei Báez overlays cresting, calligraphic gesture onto a WPA-commissioned architectural diagram of the United States Marine Hospital in New Orleans, one of many historic infrastructural sites threatened or damaged during Hurricane Katrina. Once dedicated to caring for injured or sick seamen in the United States Merchant Marines, the building was later converted into a psychiatric hospital. Following Hurricane Katrina, the hospital expanded its mission to include outpatient mental health care for adults. For Báez, mark-making becomes means of situating subjugated personal memory and experience in dialogue with the narratives and charted spaces of the Western tradition. Intervening within this source document, the wave becomes a change-making gesture that responds to the history of trauma linked to this site while carving out space for healing from a point of self-determination.
Provenance
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Purchased with funds from the International Director’s Council in honor of Carolyn Wade, with additional funds from the Young Collectors Council, 2020
2020.23
Exhibitions
James Cohan Tribeca, Firelei Báez, March 8 - April 25, 2020Publications
Golden, T., Respini, E., Godfrey, M., Acevedo-Yates, C., & Russell, L. (2022). Firelei Báez: To breathe full and free (D. Norr, Ed.). New York, NY: Gregory R. Miller &., pp. 58-59.Godfrey, Mark and Siegel, Katy (Eds.), Making Their Mark: Art by Women in the Shah Garg Collection,
New York, NY: Gregory R. Miller & Co., 2023, pp. 37