In the Cut
Quinci Baker
GALLERY II
Quinci Baker, Desire Path, 2025, digital collage.
April 26 – May 25, 2025
Opening reception: Saturday, April 26, from 6–8pm
A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to announce In the Cut, a constellation of new works by 2024–2025 A.I.R. Fellow Quinci Baker. This is Baker’s first solo exhibition in New York City.
Drawing inspiration from the phenomenon of “desire paths,” In the Cut references experiences that exist off-path—those that are underrecognized, obscured, or willfully hidden as a means of survival. A “desire path” is an unplanned trail made in lieu of, or despite, a designated trail. These paths emerge through repeated divergence from established, predetermined routes. As travelers forge their way, the trail gradually becomes a recognized passage—shaped by collective insistence rather than imposed design. Desire paths widen the margin, illuminating the power of solidarity, disobedience, and grassroots movement.
The exhibition consists of sculptures, mixed-media reliefs, and drawings that guide viewers throughout the gallery space. Baker employs textiles, beads, recreational materials, synthetic hair, accessories, and other found and repurposed objects to engage with the memory embedded in material as well as the creative history inscribed in her lineage and DNA. Utilizing assemblage and bricolage, she foregrounds play as an intuitive counterforce to the neurological effects of trauma, unraveling the knots of history and healing through material. Her chosen materials declare her audience and honor the communities from which the work emerges.
In the Cut is a multimedia exploration of memory and survival through congregation, subliminal connection, and ancestral resonance. Baker’s veiled sculptural figures and abstracted compositions, depicted through various mediums, engage the viewer as a receiver of a divine message, wanderer, surveyor, or even possible predator—challenging them to consider their place within the landscape of memory and movement.
Quinci Baker is a mixed-media artist and educator from Prince George’s County, Maryland whose works combine various craft and repurposed materials in an exploration of collective memory, loss, and imagination. Baker gives form to intangible losses in personal and collective histories by utilizing the ability of objects to embody an essence, spirit, or ethos. With her own social condition serving as her portal to the infinite, she investigates the overlaps of macro and micro perspectives in time and space. Personal and cultural archives serve as Baker’s source material for proposing alternative histories.
Baker has exhibited nationally and internationally, including in group shows at Jeffrey Deitch in New York City; Jenkins Johnson Gallery in Brooklyn, NY; LADIES’ ROOM in Los Angeles, CA; and the Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum in Annapolis, MD. Two-person and solo presentations include Chela Mitchell Gallery in Washington, D.C.; Mehari Sequar Gallery in Washington, D.C.; and Keisjers Koning in Dallas, TX.
Baker earned her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art in New Haven, CT and her BFA from The Cooper Union in New York City. She has participated in notable residencies including Shandaken: Storm King and the SOMA Residency in San Rafael, Mexico. Baker is a current Artist in Residence at the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY, where she lives and works.
View Quinci Baker’s page here.
View the Press Release here.