12 rooms in Artist and Society
This room brings together two artists from different generations and places whose art reimagines historical narratives and visual references to the past
Betye Saar’s Mti is a shrine-like sculpture assembled from found materials and painted with different cultural and spiritual symbols. Since the 1960s, Saar has created assemblages that address Black experiences in the US and has worked to confront and counter racist representations in popular culture. In Mti Saar incorporates discarded objects, talismans, and iconography from African and Caribbean cultures to explore spirituality, magic and the occult.
Saar has said, ‘I’m intrigued with combining the remnant of memories, fragments of relics and ordinary objects... It’s a way of delving into the past and reaching into the future simultaneously. The art itself becomes the bridge.’
Firelei Báez’s paintings draw from Dominican and Haitian history, mythology and folklore, as well as science fiction. Untitled (A Map of the British Empire in America) imaginatively renders a figure from Dominican folklore in colossal scale on top of a British colonial map of the Caribbean. By connecting and reworking references from the past, Báez’s painting addresses the ongoing impact of colonialism and imagines new possibilities for the future.