CARRIE MAE WEEMS | UNTITLED (FROM SEA ISLANDS SERIES)

For her 1991-92 Sea Islands series, Carrie Mae Weems visited the scattered islands on the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina to examine the history, folklore, and circumstances of the Gullah-Geechee people and dialects, and their lasting impact on African American culture.

In the present work, Weems illustrates an old, out-of-use brick smokehouse, flanked by two views of an old slave quarters, one with an open window shutter, and the other which appears to have no shutter at all.

The fourth panel of this quadriptych is a text outlining the proper ways to cleanse a house and ward off unwanted spirits. The reader is advised that witches and hags will be repelled by a home that bears blue window-trimmings and is wallpapered with newsprint (the hag must read every word before it can bother you, and if the hag cannot read, ‘then there you go’). The layout of the text mirrors the framework of the house in Weems’ photographs.

Other works in this series include textual elements representative of the accompanying images’ subjects: a moon-shaped text eludes to the folktale of the moonlit drowning of the Ibo people, while a gravestone-shaped text comments on death rituals and communication with the spirit world.