b. 1953, Portland, Oregon, Lives and works in Syracuse, New York Carrie Mae Weems is a widely influential American artist whose work gives voice to people whose stories have been silenced or ignored. Investigating history, identity, and power, she finds connections between personal experience and the larger structures and institutions that shape our lives. Over the course of forty years, she has built an acclaimed body of work using photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation, and video. Since the 1980s, Weems’s work has been seen around the world, and she has inspired a generation of artists with her poetic and original approach to storytelling. Throughout her career, Weems has exposed the belief systems that have maintained the status quo. In her iconic Kitchen Table Series, from 1990, Weems builds emotionally complex narratives through simply staged black and white photographs, casting herself in the role of lover, friend, mother, and solitary woman. The series depicts scenes that are both universal and specific to the Black lives they imagine. And 22 Million Very Tired and Very Angry People, 1989-1990, presents photographs of ordinary objects with captions that point to their use as tools for revolution. Bringing together these items with silk-screened banners of text, the piece addresses the power of collective action. With From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, 1995-96, Weems collects photographs of enslaved men and women and other Black subjects from museum and university archives. Pairing these images with powerful texts, Weems reveals the role photography has played in supporting and shaping racism. Weems’s expansive practice has often overlapped with activism; in addition to her solo work, she has led collective public art projects and multi-disciplinary performances.
