Carrie Mae Weems

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Carrie Mae Weems is recognized as one of the most influential American living artists, known for her exploration of cultural identity, power dynamics, desire, intimacy, and social justice. Her work challenges prevailing representations of race, gender, and class, utilizing photography, installation, film, performance, and textiles. Weems' diverse and radical practice interrogates dominant ideologies and historical narratives shaped by science, architecture, and mass media. This book, published alongside her solo exhibitions at Barbican Art Gallery London and Kunstmuseum Basel, compiles Weems’ writings, lectures, and conversations, offering insights into themes such as the consequences of power, artistic appropriation, music as inspiration, history-making, and the normative role of architecture. Born in 1953 in Portland, Oregon, Weems trained as a dancer and photographer before pursuing a graduate degree in folklore at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1984. She gained prominence with her photographic series, The Kitchen Table Series (1990), which narrates a woman's life through staged photographs in her kitchen. In 2014, she made history as the first living African American artist to present a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York.