Hồng-Ân Trương (Rail): We were just talking about superstition and we both have some of our own family burdens.

Firelei Báez: Is it a burden or is it caring? What is it to have them all with you no matter where you go?

Rail: These kinds of superstitions really shape us. Even though they feel insignificant, they shape how we see the world. In your work, you incorporate these aspects of mythology. Is it intentional, or do you feel like this is the way that you just filter the world?

Báez: It is obviously lived, but I don’t think that's the core of how the work or why the work is made. I grew up hearing stories of Lilith-like wild women from the forest, Ciguapas, told to me as a warning: you can’t be too wild, too much of nature, don't be too independent. Everything that’s inscribed onto that figure becomes the antithesis of ideal femininity. And then as a kid I’d think, "There's so much freedom in that, why would I not want to be that? Why would I not want to be untraceable and fearless?" I think moving to the U.S. broke that acculturation process. If I had grown up in the Dominican Republic, I probably would have absorbed all of that. I probably would have been like “my ideal self is passive, my ideal self waits to be activated.” All the things that are etched into language and into the subtle little stories that are told to us. Coming to the States with third-wave feminism—even if it wasn't part of what my mom was telling me in the household—it was what the teachers were saying in the school and it was always being enacted in every public space.