Carrie Mae Weems

After the great retrospective dedicated to Lee Friedlander, the KBr space in Barcelona closes the 2022 season with a first-rate exhibition on the artist and photographer, also American, Carrie Mae Weems (Portland, 1953). Elvira Dyangani Ose, current director of the MACBA, is the curator, given that in 2010 she herself prepared at the CAAC in Seville what was until now the only exhibition in Spain dedicated to the artist: Carrie Mae Weems: Social studies . Now, a decade later, Fundación Mapfre intends to resume that important exhibition, with an exhibition that allows us to understand the magnitude of one of the most relevant African-American artists of the second half of the 20th century, whose work focuses on question the forms of racialized representation in the United States.

Trained in the fields of contemporary dance and art, Weems stands out for visual, sound and textual works, often of an installation type. One of his foundational projects is the Table series , from 1990. It consists of a set of staged photographs in which, emulating the visual code of family photography, seemingly everyday scenes of a woman and her family are represented in the domestic space of the kitchen. They are visual constructions about black intimacy and the intra-familial relationships that are established there. As the 1990s and early 2000s progressed, Weems shifted her work toward a more political approach, with racism, the African-American experience, historical memory, and gender becoming her primary focus. representation From here emerge highly celebrated projects such as From here I saw what happened and I cried (1995-1996), a work in which Weems questions the crucial role that, historically, photography has played in shaping and perpetuating the social injustice and racism. For the American critic, there is no debate possible. Weems' work is almost unique in producing visual pieces that articulate and blend, as a permanent strategy, popular visual culture and high culture to speak of the African diaspora from a thoroughly feminist perspective and understanding .

Within the ambivalence and limits that are still active on black artists by Western cultural institutions, Carrie Mae Weems has enjoyed important prizes and recognitions, such as the MacArthur Award, or conferences and exhibitions at MoMA and at the Guggenheim in New York, to name just a few. In this sense, the autumn will be a real unprecedented immersion in Barcelona in the work of this artist, because the KBr exhibition is organized in collaboration with Foto Colectania, which will also exhibit part of her legacy, and the MACBA, which will exhibit the video installation Lincoln, Lonnie and me (2012) in the Chapel space. A piece that, based on human-scale figures with ghostly features and in a sort of theatrical setting, dialogues with President Abraham Lincoln and the artist and activist Lonnie Graham about the historical and narrative construction of the past, as well as the permanent negotiations that are activated there.

Image: Untitled (Wife and Daughter) from the Kitchen Table series. © Carrie Mae Weems, courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin