felipe baeza: to feel a then and there

photo: clifford prince king

To feel a then and there is Felipe Baeza’s first solo exhibition at kurimanzutto. The show brings together portraits, composite works that combine printmaking, collage, and embroidery, and glass sculptures. Its title references the book Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009) by Cuban theorist José Esteban Muñoz, who proposes a shift in time and space to reveal the insufficiency of the present and open up the possibility of imagining alternative futures.

Baeza incorporates Muñoz’s ideas and in turn imagines these futures by depicting bodies in transformation: suspended, in a state of escape, lacking a fixed identity or sense of belonging. His figures defy imposed limits and find new ways of inhabiting the world. The artist uses titles such as A form that never settles II and A self that is not quite here but always in process to reinforce this notion of constant change— of beings in flux who reject stability and embrace the unpredictable and the unfinished. 

Material processes are essential in Baeza’s work. He allows pigments to seep into the paper and materials to retain their autonomy, followed by a deliberate process of erosion and abrasion; generating fluid and uncertain results. This technique resonates with the corporealities he portrays— always shifting, refusing a fixed definition. 

His creative process functions as a collage in itself. The bodies in his works take shape through fragments of paper he has collected over the years. “We are a combination of different times,” says Baeza, and his pieces reflect this: layers of color, plaster, and other materials accumulate on the paper like a skin in transformation. In this way, the surface acquires its own memory, holding remnants of past and present moments that, as they overlap, construct new possibilities of existence.