This visually arresting work by Firelei Báez is a reference to Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s 1800 "Portrait of Madeleine", formerly known as Portrait of a Negress. Benoist’s painting depicts a young unnamed black woman painted in the neoclassical style with her breast exposed, echoing Delacroix’s depiction of “Liberty Leading the People” (1830). For Báez, there is an inherent tension to this historical reference, between blackness and freedom. In Báez’s reimagined depiction, she seeks to look beyond the culturally prescribed symbols that bind our perception of self and the other, instead choosing to look toward transcendence and true interior release.

Within the world of this painting, the point of transcendence emanates from the center of the arched panel, itself like a portal to another realm. The luminous streams of rich impasto paint radiate outward, like the physical manifestation of enlightenment or inner peace, masking the portrait beneath it. In this way, Báez's painterly intervention seeks to undo the signifiers of race, gender, or class, imagining the infinite possibilities of perception should we only look within.