For Améthyste and Athénaïre (Exiled Muses Beyond Jean Luc Nancy’s Canon), Anacaonas, 1982

Oil on canvas over wood panel, with hand-painted wood frames
© Firelei Báez; courtesy the artist and James Cohan, New York. Photo by John Wronn.

Firelei Báez frequently features strong women as protagonists in her projects. Among those who have inspired her are Marie-Louise Coidavid (1778–1851), the first queen of the independent Kingdom of Haiti, and Coidavid’s daughters, Améthyste and Athénaïre. Both daughters are depicted in For Améthyste and Athénaïre (Exiled Muses Beyond Jean Luc Nancy’s Canon), Anacaonas. The imaginary portraits are presented in decorative, colonial-style frames. The complex title seems to combat Western dominance in the person of the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy (1940–2021), while elevating the lesser-known Caribbean history of the defiant fifteenth-century Taíno cacique Anacaona. As in many of her works, the artist chose to represent her figures without noses or mouths—the features most often subject to racial stereotyping.