A Latinx Intervention in the CMA’s Paintings Galleries
Nadiah Rivera Fellah, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art
Those who have visited the Cleveland Museum of Art’s galleries recently may have come across a stunning temporary installation in the museum’s Betty T. and David M. Schneider Gallery (218), sometimes called the east wing glass box. This site-specific, immersive installation is by the Dominican American artist Firelei Báez. The piece, titled the vast ocean of all possibilities (19°36'16.9"N 72°13'07.0"W, 41°30'32.3"N 81°36'41.7"W), was commissioned especially for the second iteration of FRONT International, a contemporary art triennial sited in and throughout the greater Cleveland area.
Who Wrote the History of Painting?
If you have ever taken a walk through the CMA’s paintings galleries, you may have begun in our contemporary galleries. As you walk across the corridor from there and continue towards gallery 218, you will notice that you are going back in time, chronologically, through a range of artistic movements. You encounter Surrealism, Post-Impressionism, Impressionism, Romanticism, and Realism. This gallery layout is not such an unusual one in art museums, as it charts a history or a canon of European painting.
The gallery just outside gallery 218’s glass box features 19th-century European painting (gallery 219), and it forms a kind of origin story or point of entry for subsequent painting traditions. It is significant that many of the paintings in this gallery include ruins or architectural fragments of one kind or another. In the history of 19th-century painting, these ruins and buildings were often a way to draw connections or claim lineage from sophisticated, ancient civilizations and their monuments (usually Roman) to the present.
This narrative of “claiming” another civilization’s past became the perfect way for Báez to ground her project in the adjacent galleries. When you enter the glass box, note how the installation has been constructed to look as though it is bursting through the gallery walls. The entire installation becomes a life-size intervention in the Eurocentric, colonial history of the European painting canon, forcefully making space for less-known histories and forms, in this case, with examples from the Caribbean.
Transported from the Caribbean
Báez is an American artist of Haitian and Dominican descent. This installation is part of an ongoing series in which the artist reimagines the archeological ruins of the Sans-Souci Palace in northern Haiti. The Sans-Souci Palace was once the home of King Henri Christophe I of Haiti, a former enslaved person who became a key leader in the 1804 Haitian Revolution, when the nation gained independence from France. The king built himself this elaborate palace, which soon became an object of resentment by the public. King Henri was ousted from power a few years later, and in 1842, an earthquake destroyed the palace. In drawing connections to this site, Báez underscores its position as a complex site of healing and resistance in its Caribbean context.
The CMA’s exhibition is not the first time the artist has reimagined the site for an installation. In 2021, Báez created an installation for the ICA Boston’s Watershed, which imaged the ruins in conversation with the Boston area’s own revolutionary history and Atlantic connections. A hanging fabric ceiling created an underwater feel, and there was also a sound element to the installation.
In the iteration Báez conceptualized for the CMA, the structure is similar, but she has expanded the oceanic concept by adding brightly colored sea life. These pieces of painted faux coral, rocks, and moss are interspersed with pieces of urban waste like you might find on ocean floors. I particularly love this added element since it ties back to the palette and brightness of the artist’s canvas-based painting practice. Another element that draws parallels to the artist’s painting practice is the structure’s painted surfaces. They are adorned with reproductions of traditional West African indigo printing (later used in the American South) and marine plants and creatures native to Caribbean waters. If you look at the surfaces in the installation, you will notice a variety of repeated motifs, which were hand painted with the aid of stencils that the artist and her team used.
This illusion that the ruins of the San-Souci Palace have traveled through both time and space to burst into the CMA’s galleries also makes for interesting architectural vistas from the glass box. The installation creates an interesting conversation with the modernist style of the gallery, designed by Rafael Viñoly, and the classic marble walls of the 1916 building. Given the artist’s intentions, it is fitting that this installation is in critical conversation with both painting and architecture in the context of the CMA’s galleries. Come check out the installation in person while it’s on view, through January 15, 2023.