New Curators is a paid twelve-month curatorial training programme based in London for aspiring curators of contemporary art from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
The 2023/2024 New Curators fellows worked with artist Firelei Báez and the South London Gallery team on our exhibition, Sueño de la Madrugada (A Midnight’s Dream).
Over the past year, the group have been meeting with artists and curators, visiting other arts organisations and doing research trips and presentations. They have spent a lot of time with Báez’s work, and thinking about the themes that run throughout her practice.
Some of them have put together a list of recommendations for you to dive into research of your own. Take a look at what they’ve been reading!
Carol Bedoy
While working on this exhibition, I have constantly returned to Grieving, by Cristina Rivera Garza, a collection of short chronicles, journalism, and personal essays focusing on the systemic violence experienced in contemporary Mexico. Rivera Garza is working from and against this idea from a political context which poses this collective grief as an act of resistance against state violence. She explores how neoliberalism, corruption, and drug trafficking has shaped Mexico and how writing is an act of resilience. Being inspired by Firelei’s work, which are her own examples of resistance and speaking to the struggles faced in her home island of Hispaniola – it made me relate back to Mexico and how as a nation we’ve had to endure loss in many senses of the word.
Lucia Jurikova
In Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Val Plumwood critiques the Western philosophical tradition of dualism that separates and devalues nature and the feminine, advocating for an integrated, ecological feminist approach. Firelei Báez’s practice aligns with Plumwood’s ideas by challenging historical narratives and exploring the intersections of gender, race, and the environment, creating artworks that merge natural and cultural elements to resist oppressive binaries.
Lemeeze Davids
Pascal Gielen & Nav Haq’s The Aesthetics of Ambiguity: Understanding and Addressing Monoculture talks about using open-ended or ambiguous elements in artwork to search for and understand one’s place in the world, by ” seeking action for finding new dimensions and possibilities, and creative reconciliation in response to ideological status quo”. Aligned with this, Firelei Báez has crafted Sueño de la Madrugada (A Midnight’s Dream) to speak to dreamlike scenes and imaginary worlds, to deal with colonial histories. By leaving things open to interpretation, the artwork allows viewers to come up with their own ideas and create new versions of history.
Amandine Vabre Chau
Trickster makes this world: Mischief, Myth and Art is a book written by scholar Lewis Hyde on the significance of the trickster figure across cultures. He describes it as a “boundary-crosser”, a necessary being, to catalyse change in society though its play with rules and customs. Revisiting Eshu in West Africa, Krishna in India, Coyote in North America and many others, Hyde draws a portrait of unruliness in mythological creatures that becomes essential in culture and art. Indeed, he compares these folkloric entities to present-day artists, the contemporary equivalent to these tricksters, due to their ability to enact change by defying norms and pursuing a career with play at the centre of their practice . We can tie this back to the Ciguapa figure which artist Firelei Báez often references, and how it embodies emancipation thought its playful and rebellious nature.
Want to find out more about Firelei Báez’s work? Her book, published in 2024, offers a holistic understanding of her complex body of work, cementing her as one of today’s most important artists. Partly inspired by artists’ sketchbooks, the monograph includes full-spread reproductions of the artist’s preparatory sketches alongside annotations, source images and close-up details of her artworks. Shop through the South London Gallery Bookshop today.
Visit the South London Gallery Bookshop Tues-Sun, to browse our full book range inspired by the exhibition. Our store is committed to highlighting underrepresented authors, independent publishers and championing reading across all ages.
Firelei Báez: Sueño de la Madrugada (A Midnight’s Dream) is free to visit at the South London Gallery from 28 June – 8 September 2024.