Carrie Mae Weems (born April 20, 1953) is an American artist working in text, fabric, audio, digital images andinstallation video, and is best known for her photography.[1][2] She achieved prominence through her early 1990s photographic projectThe Kitchen Table Series. Her photographs, films and videos focus on serious issues facing African Americans today, including racism,sexism, politics and personal identity.
She once said, "Let me say that my primary concern in art, as in politics, is with the status and place of Afro-Americans in the country."[3] More recently, however, she expressed the view that "Black experience is not really the main point; rather, complex, dimensional, human experience and social inclusion ... is the real point."[4] She continues to produce art that provides social commentary on the experiences of people of color, especially black women, in America.[1]
Her talents have been recognized byHarvard University andWellesley College, with fellowships, artist-in-residence and visiting professor positions. She taught photography atHampshire College in the late 1980s and shot the "Kitchen Table" series in her home in Western Massachusetts. Weems is one of six artist-curators who made selections forArtistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection, at theSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2019/20.[5] She isartist in residence atSyracuse University.[6]
Weems was born inPortland, Oregon in 1953, the second of seven children to Carrie Polk and Myrlie Weems.[7] She began participating in dance and street theater in 1965.[1] At the age of 16, she gave birth to her only child, a daughter named Faith C. Weems.[8]
Later that year (1970), she moved out of her parents' home and soon relocated to San Francisco[9] to studymodern dance withAnna Halprin at a workshop Halprin had started with several other dancers, as well as the artistsJohn Cage andRobert Morris.[10] Weems recalled, "I started dancing with the famous and extraordinary Anna Halprin. I was in Anna's company for I suppose, maybe a year or two ... experimenting with very deep parts of dance and ideas about dance. Anna was really interested in ideas about peace and using dance as a way to bridge different cultures together as a vehicle for multicultural expression ... I wasn't really so interested in dance, I just knew how to dance really well. I had a really, I think, deep sense of my body from a very early age."[9] Thirty years later in 2008, Weems circled back to dance in her projectConstructing History: A Requiem to Mark the Moment, at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, noting "I'm just beginning this project of looking at blues and flamenco, and ideas about dance and movement."[9]
While in her early twenties, Weems was politically active in thelabor movement as aunion organizer.[1] Her first camera, which she received as a birthday gift,[13] was used for this work before being used for artistic purposes. She was inspired to pursue photography after coming acrossThe Black Photographers Annual, a book of images by African-American photographers including Shawn Walker,Beuford Smith,Anthony Barboza, Ming Smith, Adger Cowans andRoy DeCarava.[14] This led her to New York City and theStudio Museum in Harlem, where she began to meet other artists and photographers such asCoreen Simpson andFrank Stewart, and they began to form a community. In 1976, Weems took a photography class at the Museum taught byDawoud Bey and earned money as an assistant to Anthony Barboza.[15] She returned to San Francisco, but lived bi-coastally and was invited byJanet Henry to teach at theStudio Museum[16] and a community of photographers in New York.[14]
In 1983, Weems completed her first collection of photographs, text and spoken word, calledFamily Pictures and Stories.[17] The images told the story of her family, and she has said that in this project she was trying to explore the movement of black families out of the South and into the North, using her family as a model for the larger theme.[14] Her next series, calledAin't Jokin', was completed in 1988. It focused on racial jokes andinternalized racism. Another series calledAmerican Icons, completed in 1989, also focused on racism. Weems has said that throughout the 1980s she was turning away from the documentary photography genre, instead "creating representations that appeared to be documents but were in fact staged" and also "incorporating text, using multiples images,diptychs andtriptychs, and constructing narratives."[14] Sexism was the next focal point for her. It was the topic of one of her most well known collections calledThe Kitchen Table series which was completed over a two-year period (1989 to 1990), and has Weems cast as the central character in the photographs.[13][18][19] AboutKitchen Table andFamily Pictures and Stories, Weems has said: "I use my own constructed image as a vehicle for questioning ideas about the role of tradition, the nature of family, monogamy,polygamy, relationships between men and women, between women and their children, and between women and other women—underscoring the critical problems and the possible resolves."[14] She has expressed disbelief and concern about the exclusion of images of the black community, particularly black women, from the popular media, and she aims to represent these excluded subjects and speak to their experience through her work. These photographs created space for other black female artists to further create art. Weems has also reflected on the themes and inspirations of her work as a whole, saying,
... from the very beginning, I've been interested in the idea of power and the consequences of power; relationships are made and articulated through power. Another thing that's interesting about the early work is that even though I've been engaged in the idea of autobiography, other ideas have been more important: the role of narrative, the social levels of humor, the deconstruction of documentary, the construction of history, the use of text, storytelling, performance, and the role of memory have all been more central to my thinking than autobiography.[14]
Weems remains active in the art world with her recent photographic project such asLouisiana Project (2003),Roaming (2006),Museums (2006),Constructing History (2008),African Jewels (2009),Mandingo (2010),Slow Fade to Black (2010),Equivalents (2012),Blue Notes (2014–2015) and the expanded bodies of works including installation, mixed media, and video project.[20][13][21][22] Her recent project,Grace Notes: Reflections for Now, is a multimedia performance that explores "the role of grace in the pursuit of democracy."[23] Her recent workSlow Fade to Black (2010) explores the lost image and memory of African-American female entertainers, including singers, dancers, and actresses, in the twentieth century by playing on the idea of cinematic fade. The freeze frame of a camera lens makes it impossible for us to tell whether or not those images are fading in or fading outs.[24] The series of photos features a number of prominent female African-American artists from the last century, such asMarian Anderson andBillie Holiday, who faded out of ourcollective memory.[24] The blurred images of the artists serves as metaphor of the on-going struggle for African-American entertainers to remain visible and relevant. In 2023 Weems became the first black woman to win theHasselblad Award.[25]
For the season 2020/2021 at theVienna State Opera Weems designed the large-scale picture (176 sqm)Queen B (Mary J. Blige) as part of the exhibition seriesSafety Curtain, conceived bymuseum in progress.[26]
In 2024,Bottega Veneta commissioned Weems to create an ad campaign that starred the rapperA$AP Rocky and his sons.[27]
Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video,[35] 2012.
Carrie Mae Weems,Yale University Press, 2012.[36] The first major survey of Weems's career, including a collection of essays from scholars in addition to over 200 of Weems's works.[37]
In 2023, theBarbican Centre in London hosted Weems's first major UK exhibition, titledReflections for Now and featuring photography and video installations from over three decades.[45] Her work was also featured in the group showSpirit in the Land organized and exhibited with accompanying publication at theNasher Museum of Art atDuke University in 2023, which later traveled to thePérez Art Museum Miami in 2024. Carrie Mae Weems presented about her career trajectory at the Scholl Lecture Series, an artist's talk series, presented by PAMM, in February of 2024.[46][47][48][49]
From September 22, 2023 — July 7, 2024 theSmithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) exhibitedCarrie Mae Weems: Looking Forward, Looking Back[50] which two works that SAAM had recently acquired. The two works,Lincoln, Lonnie, and Me–A Story in 5 Parts (2012) andConstructing History (2008), were displayed a new gallery devoted to time-based media.
Mickalene Thomas and Weems talk with curator Eugenie Tsai about using their work to challenge conventional ideas of beauty, race, and gender (Brooklyn Museum, 2013)
^Willis-Thomas, Deborah (1989).An Illustrated Bio-Bibliography of Black Photographers, 1940–1988. New York: Garland Publishing. p. 148.ISBN978-0-8240-8389-2.
^Kisch, Andrea; Sterling, Susan Fisher (1994).Carrie Mae Weems. Washington D.C.: National Museum of Women in the Arts. pp. 14–15.ISBN978-0-940979-21-5.
^Rothfuss, Joan; Carpenter, Elizabeth (2005).Bits & Pieces Put Together to Present a Semblance of a Whole: Walker Art Center Collections. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center. p. 580.ISBN978-0-935640-78-6.
^Weems, Carrie Mae; Museum of Modern Art (N.Y.) (1995).Carrie Mae Weems. New York: Museum of Modern Art.OCLC501437361.
^Weems, Carrie Mae; Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati, Ohio) (1995).Carrie Mae Weems: image maker. Cincinnati, OH: Contemporary Arts Center.OCLC46328668.
^Weems, Carrie Mae; Piché, Thomas; Golden, Thelma; Everson Museum of Art (1998).Carrie Mae Weems: recent work, 1992–1998. New York; Syracuse, N.Y.: George Braziller; in association with Everson Museum of Art.ISBN978-0-8076-1444-0.OCLC40043580.
^Weems, Carrie Mae; Neil, Erik; Cahan, Susan; Metzger, Pamela R.; Newcomb Art Gallery (2004).Carrie Mae Weems: the Louisiana Project. New Orleans: Newcomb Art Gallery.ISBN978-0-9668595-5-3.OCLC58961580.
^Weems, Carrie Mae; Hughley, Stephanie S; Savannah College of Art and Design (Estados Unidos) (2008).Carrie Mae Weems: constructing history a requiem to mark the moment. Savannah: Savannah College of Art and Design.ISBN978-0-9797440-8-2.OCLC959176508.
^Weems, Carrie Mae; Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (Seville, Spain) (2010).Carrie Mae Weems: social studies. Sevilla: Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo.ISBN978-84-9959-026-4.OCLC688018319.
^Weems, Carrie Mae; Delmez, Kathryn E; Frist Center for the Visual Arts (Nashville, Tenn.) (2012).Carrie Mae Weems three decades of photography and video: [Traveling exhibition, United States, Sept. 2012 – May 2014. Nashville, TN; New Haven: Frist Center for the Visual Arts; in association with Yale University Press.ISBN978-0-300-17689-6.OCLC835295353.
^Schoonmaker, Trevor (2023).Spirit in the land: Exhibition, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, 2023. Durham, North Carolina: Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.ISBN978-0-938989-45-5.
^"Spirit in the Land".Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. RetrievedMarch 4, 2024.
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