Carrie Mae Weems: Spaces of Resistance
Gallerie d’Italia museum in Turin, Italy, presents a major retrospective of renowned African-American artist Carrie Mae Weems, curated by Sarah Meister, former photography curator at MoMA in New York. The exhibition explores the photographer’s investigations of cultural identity, sexism, and class.
Commissioned by Intesa Sanpaolo, her new series “Preach”: combines early images from Harlem, San Diego, and Sea Island, Georgia, with a wide range of new work reflecting Black religious expression today. The artist writes: "Through flames and bombs, pray wherever and whenever you can, in ports and cabins, in palaces and basements, in theaters and clubs. From your secret hiding place, you have discovered new forms of worship...".
Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Great Expectations), 2016; from the series Scenes and Takes.
© Carrie Mae Weems, courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin
Untitled, 1988; from the series Four Women. © Carrie Mae Weems and reproduced courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin
The retrospective also features works like the celebrated “Kitchen Table Series” (1990), where Weems stages herself as the protagonist in fictional scenes set around a kitchen table — a space rarely depicted as a site of importance — and “Painting the Town” (2021), which at first appear to be abstract paintings but are photographs of boarded-up shop fronts from the Black Lives Matter protests, where authorities had covered activists’ messages with broad swaths of paint to make them illegible.
Painting the Town #2, 2021; from the series Painting the Town. © Carrie Mae Weems and reproduced courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin
Road Sign, 1991–92; from the series Preach. © Carrie Mae Weems, courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin
Untitled; from the series Preach. © Carrie Mae Weems, courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin
The exhibition "Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter” runs at Gallerie d’Italia museum, in Turin, through September 7.
