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Firelei Báez: Americanana 

Go behind the scenes with Firelei Báez in her Brooklyn studio as she discusses the makings of Americananana, her recent solo exhibition at James Cohan.

For over a decade, Báez has painted transcendent chromatic interplays of abstract gesture and symbolic imagery directly onto found maps and printed materials to disrupt the boundaries they serve to delineate. For her third solo exhibition with the gallery, Báez presented a group of immersive large-scale canvases that continued and deepened her ongoing exploration of narratives of Euro-American exceptionalism. In her vivid new paintings, Báez ruminated on the foundational mythologies that have come to form a uniquely American brand of nostalgia, one shaped by the projected desire for an idealized past that never was.

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