Firelei Baez formulates a visual passage between past and present, individual and collective experiences, while looking for parallels between Caribbean and Ukrainian contexts through the idea of resistance, exclusion and endurance. Interested in cultural ambiguities and how physical world can be re-examined in the framework of a larger history, the artist researches connections between the body and different forms of official representations.

The transition of time is reflected in textures, symbols and materials used for creating her complex installation and intimate visual archives. The heroes of her miniature paintings are people with marginalized personal narratives – migrants, victims of natural catastrophes, women of dark skin and voluptuous shapes. They appear on the old book pages, negotiating with their multiple voice their presence within official history. Maps, patterns, and goddesses derived from different contexts combine into a palimpsest of personal biography embedded in the migrant experience. They overlay a wall seemingly dropped anachronistically from another time. It is a surface that melds the landscape and symbols of Cap Haitien, Haiti and Carpathia, Ukraine into one. A contemplative space made up of Caribbean and Ukrainian plants provides refuge, and gives room to dream and self-reflect beyond the seeming chaos of the external world. A small light flickers in the darkness, revealing itself to be a burning tire, a symbol of resistance around the world.