Souki Mehdaoui

Art21 invited me to make a short film about Dominican artist Firelei Baez, and after one conversation, I fell in love with her ability to alchemize the pain of racialized narratives into transformative creativity and flip traditional power narratives on their head. Firelei's approach to her craft inspired me too look at my own ethnic narratives more critically and creatively, and I just wanted the world to meet this incredible woman from her point of view, seeing history as a palimpsest and symbols as a doorway to conscience.