CARRIE MAE WEEMS | MAYFLOWERS LONG FORGOTTEN

Born in 1953, Carrie Mae Weems is an contemporary artist widely celebrated for her award-winning photographs, films, and videos. Working with an extensive range of mediums, Weems challenges the roles of people of color and women within established social systems. She explores the intricacies of storytelling through a powerful combination of image and text. Some of Weems’ best-known projects are The Kitchen Table Series and From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried. The first comprehensive retrospective of her work, Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video, opened in September 2012 at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee. When it traveled to New York City in January 2014, she became the first African-American woman ever given a solo exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Weems has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including the prestigious Prix de Rome, National Medal of Arts, MacArthur Fellowship, W.E.B. DuBois Award from Harvard University, and was named Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow. Her work is included in public and private collections across the world, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, Spain; the Tate Modern.

Weems is successful at making art a universal dialogue. Her photo series deeply resonate with individuals of all backgrounds, as they address the trauma of America’s past through not only a critical lens, but, more importantly, one of beauty and strength.