Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now | Barbican Centre

You Became A Scientific Profile; A Negroid Type; An Anthropological Debate; and & A Photographic Subject from From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, 1995-96 © Carrie Mae Weems Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York / Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin.

Written by Simran Tuteja

Carrie Mae Weems has continued diving deep into cultural identity, social structures, power dynamics, and desires. Her work usually points out the flaws of societal perspectives regarding race, class, gender, and history. Her activism plays a central role in her art. She believes in making beautiful and meaningful art, aesthetically polishing the mess of a messy world, and specifying history. Three decades of Weems’s photography, videography, and installations are on display at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, from June 22nd, 2023, till September 3rd, 2023. This exhibition is a collective of Weems’s unique poetic perspective and includes works never seen in the UK. 

Untitled (Woman and Daughter with Make Up) from Kitchen Table Series, 1990 © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York / Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin.

One of the works on display includes photographs from the Kitchen Table Series (1990). In Untitled (Woman Standing Alone), wherein the artist (our subject) is standing across the table and staring into the lens, and in Untitled (Woman and Daughter with Makeup), wherein the artist is sitting across the table and doing her makeup, the second subject (a young girl) is mirroring her mother can be seen. This series focuses on the role women play in domestic environments, and the home represents a space for resistance which paved the way for two more series (also on display) by her, named Roaming (2006) and Museums (2006). 

When and Where I Enter — Mussolini’s Rome from Roaming, 2006 © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York / Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin.

The Louvre from Museums, 2006 © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York / Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin.

The Edge of Time — Ancient Rome from Roaming (2006) is a silhouette of a woman in a black dress with Rome as the background. Similarly, When and Where I Enter — Mussolini’s Rome from Roaming (2006), The Louvre from Museums (2006), and Philadelphia Museum of Art from Museums (2006) all consist of a silhouette of a woman in distinctive backgrounds. Using these images, Weems points out how architecture represents a physical entity for cultural and political dominance. Her work confronts the ruling narratives of history and ideas spread across art, science, and media. Some of her other works on display include From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995–6), Constructing History (2008), Lincoln, Lonnie, and Me (2012), and the panoramic film The Shape of Things (2021) amongst others. 

If I Ruled the World, 2004 © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York / Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin.

The exhibition will also launch a new book called Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now. It captures the artist's activism, influence on art, and intellectual capabilities. This exhibition is the most prominent display of Weems’s work across multiple art forms. She plays the performer and narrator while mentioning the brutal reality of human lives in various communities. 

Carrie Mae Weems was awarded a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, in 1981 and an MFA in Photography from the University of California, San Diego, in 1984. She is one of the most contemporarily influential and highly acclaimed American artists. She first came to the limelight in the 1980s for her photographic work that questioned the representation of Black people in a racial and discriminatory system, mainly in the US. In 2014, she was the first African American artist (living) to have had a solo exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. She has been awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome and The National Endowment of the Arts and one of the first Medal of Arts by the US Department of State (2012). She resides and works in Syracuse, New York.