Carrie Mae WeemsThe Evidence of Things Not Seen01.04. - 10.07.2022
Württembergischer Kunstverein
Carrie Mae Weems, *1953 in Portland (Oregon), USA, lives and works in New York
Photo © Hans D. Christ
The Evidence of Things Not Seen is the first comprehensive solo exhibition of the artist Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953) in Germany. Weems is one of the most influential contemporary artists in the United States, whose aesthetic and political impact extends far beyond the art world. In 2014 she was the first African American artist to be given a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
With over thirty bodies of work, including extensive photographic projects, videos, objects, and installations, The Evidence of Things Not Seen offers a multi-layered look at Weems’ artistic practice, which has been developing for more than thirty-five years. For the exhibition a spatial setting was designed together with the artist that follows the performative character of her practice.
Carrie Mae Weems’ works concern themselves with the questioning and appropriation of dominant historical narratives, as generated and reproduced in (educational) institutions, science, art, architecture, monuments, photography, and other mass media. By seeking out and reenacting these narratives she uncovers the unheard and unseen histories of the marginalized groups within them. Weems, who appears in many of her works herself, leads us to these blind spots in person and invites us to explore them together.
The exhibition’s focus is on the long history of violence against people of color, women, and the socially disadvantaged, which Weems counters with an equally long history of resistance. Body, beauty, ritual, magic, and spirituality, the public and private, the political and poetic are of central importance here. In this way she uncovers other possible courses of history – and thus also of the future.
Read moreExhibition Views
