Carrie Mae WeemsBild/Gegenbild: Tarrah Krajnak, VALIE EXPORT, Sanja Iveković, Ana Mendieta, Carrie Mae Weems
22.04. - 27.08.2023
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

In her se­ries Not Manet’s Type from 1997, the artist Car­rie Mae Weems (b. 1953 Port­land, OR, USA, lives in Syra­cuse, NY, USA) de­picts her­self—indi­rect­ly, us­ing a dress­ing-table mir­ror—in vari­ous pos­tures, in­clud­ing as a nude mod­el.

In the ac­com­pany­ing texts, Weems ob­serves with bit­ing dis­dain that mod­ern Eu­ro­pean pain­ters nev­er chose Black wo­m­en as mod­els; in­stead, their beau­ty was ex­clud­ed. At the same time, she ad­dress­es her un­cer­tain­ty as to the an­gle from which she should ap­proach the sub­ject: as artist or mod­el? On the lev­el of the gaze, she switch­es the un­cer­tain­ty around: the mir­ror frames the in­ti­mate scene and thus makes the view­er guil­ty of voyeurism.

Cu­ra­tor: Bar­bara En­gel­bach