Firelei Báez was born in Santiago de los Caballeros and lives and works in New York. She makes intricate works on paper and canvas that are intrinsically indebted to a rigorous studio practice as well as large scale sculpture. Through a convergence of interest in anthropology, science fiction, black female subjectivity and women’s work; her art explores the humor and fantasy involved in self-making within diasporic societies, which have an ability to live with cultural ambiguities and use them to build psychological and even metaphysical defenses against cultural invasions.