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Firelei Báez exhibit
Aug. 1st, 2021 07:06 pmToday was the day we chose to go to the Firelei Báez exhibit! Nothing like a sunny, mild, first-of-August day to venture into Boston for the first time in, oh, a very long time.
Everything was enchanting and exciting, but I will try to space things out over posts so as not to be gushing in too many different directions at once. Today I will gush mainly about the exhibit. ... Actually, the gushing will mainly take the form of photos because, having read Siddhartha Mitter's New York Times article, I didn't then actually take the time to look at the accompanying information that went with the installation. I just whirled around going, "This is great, this is so great! Listen to that recording--they're talking in so many languages! Feel these barnacles! Look at these details!" and so on.
So it's meant to suggest Haiti's Sans-Souci palace, beneath the waves. Here is a photo of the actual Sans-Souci ruins (you can click through to see it larger):
And here is your first view into the installation. The waves above, the arches aslant, like you are swimming any which way, like they shifted in an earthquake before drowning.
( waves and barnacles )
At the front of the exhibit, Firelei Báez has a large mural of a mythical form superimposed over a map of the Atlantic and Caribbean, with textual comments on various waterways and features. I picked out a few:
( Boston Harbor, Connecticut River, Buzzard's Bay, Plymouth )
I'm going to save murals for another post, but I just have to include this one, which is on the Watershed building itself. Cut off by my inferior photo taking is a magnificent fish sculpture. Instead, willy-nilly, you get that bright white pickup truck.
Okay, I found a photo of the fish online. It's from a WBUR article from 2018--before the mural, clearly!
Everything was enchanting and exciting, but I will try to space things out over posts so as not to be gushing in too many different directions at once. Today I will gush mainly about the exhibit. ... Actually, the gushing will mainly take the form of photos because, having read Siddhartha Mitter's New York Times article, I didn't then actually take the time to look at the accompanying information that went with the installation. I just whirled around going, "This is great, this is so great! Listen to that recording--they're talking in so many languages! Feel these barnacles! Look at these details!" and so on.
So it's meant to suggest Haiti's Sans-Souci palace, beneath the waves. Here is a photo of the actual Sans-Souci ruins (you can click through to see it larger):
And here is your first view into the installation. The waves above, the arches aslant, like you are swimming any which way, like they shifted in an earthquake before drowning.
( waves and barnacles )
At the front of the exhibit, Firelei Báez has a large mural of a mythical form superimposed over a map of the Atlantic and Caribbean, with textual comments on various waterways and features. I picked out a few:
( Boston Harbor, Connecticut River, Buzzard's Bay, Plymouth )
I'm going to save murals for another post, but I just have to include this one, which is on the Watershed building itself. Cut off by my inferior photo taking is a magnificent fish sculpture. Instead, willy-nilly, you get that bright white pickup truck.
Okay, I found a photo of the fish online. It's from a WBUR article from 2018--before the mural, clearly!
