In her work, Báez seeks to underscore subaltern histories that are often stifled by dominant narratives about migration, to create possibilities for self-determination and alternate futures. Here, she paints a carnivalesque protrusion of feathers that overlays a 1966 wall map titled “Colonization in America,” prepared by the U.S. Civic Education Service for use in primary school classrooms across the United States. The map depicts the Eastern seaboard and presents European colonizers as the protagonists in “settling” unclaimed land—any mention of Indigenous people is mediated through this contact. Drawing reference to Mardi Gras and double-edged Southern exuberance, the feathers in this painting coalesce into the suggested form of a mask. For Báez, these feathers act as visual cues that signal the diasporic posturing, camouflaging, and the adapting of performative visual languages in efforts to negotiate and represent an authentic cultural self.

Map courtesy of the David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries.