Firelei Báez, The Earth That Remains, 2025

Firelei Báez
b. 1980, Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic; lives in New York, NY

The Earth That Remains, 2025
Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas
Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Promised Gift of Laura and Michael Werner

The Earth That Remains, a recent work by Firelei Báez on view at the MCA through May 31, 2026, depicts a ciguapa—a trickster from Dominican folklore—bowing over an architectural plan of the Bonnet Carré Spillway in Louisiana.

Under a foreboding sky, the ciguapa’s body spills into a waterfall and lush vegetation, expanding beyond the edges of the plan. The Bonnet Carré Spillway is a flood control structure that diverts excess water from the Mississippi River into Lake Pontchartrain to protect communities, especially New Orleans, from flooding. Báez’s ciguapa disrupts the spillway, complicating the project’s image as a social good by hinting at what was lost when the spillway was built. Two historic cemeteries of enslaved and formerly enslaved people are located in the area, and those communities were displaced when the spillway was constructed in 1929. The cemeteries themselves became neglected. In 1975, human remains were disinterred by the spillway’s operation. The descendants of these communities have since become engaged in calling for the commemoration of the cemeteries and the recognition of their place in history.

In the video above, Báez discusses her use of abstraction and figuration against the backdrop of her painting, which will enter the MCA’s permanent collection as a promised gift of Laura and Michael Werner.