Earlier this week, the Guggenheim Museum presented the exhibition, Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video. The exhibition is on view through May and it features written text, audio recording, video and photographs by Oregon-born photographer Carrie Mae Weems (Some of Weems’ most recent works will also be presented in an upcoming exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem on Jan.30).
She’s best known for her Kitchen Table Series (1990), which featured stunning vignettes of her around the kitchen table. In an interview with the New York Times’ Lens blog last year, Weems explained how the project challenged her to find beauty in the mundane mileu of everyday life: “…it doesn’t have to be the ‘real moment as seen spontaneously in life, but that it can be constructed in my living room, my dining room, in my kitchen, in my backyard, and it can be equally honorable, if not more so, than the actual ‘document’ of that reality,” she said.
According to the Guggenheim:
The exhibition traces the evolution of Weems’s career over the last 30 years, from her early documentary and autobiographical photographic series to the more conceptual and philosophically complex works that have placed her at the forefront of contemporary art. Although Weems employs a variety of means to address an array of issues, all of her work displays an overarching commitment to better understanding the present by closely examining history and identity. It also contains a desire for universality: while African Americans are typically her primary subjects, Weems wants “people of color to stand for the human multitudes” and for her art to resonate with all audiences.
The Beauty In The Dark 