1. Carrie Mae Weems, Roaming, Hauptdatensatz (Serie von 6), 2006, © Carrie Mae Weems / courtesy of the Artist, Jack Shainman Gallery and Galerie Barbara Thumm / Julian Salinas
Carrie's writing and arts, how does
a story describe a picture ?
Until the month of April 2024, the exhibition of the Kunstmuseum Basel present the American artist Carrie Mae Weems, which is one of the most important black artists of her generation, who's known for her installations, series and videos overlooking the subject of politic and the humans life.
2. Carrie Mae Weems, The Hampton Projet, Hauptdatensatz (30 Teile), 2006, c-prints on muslin or canvas © Carrie Mae Weems / courtesy of the Artist, Jack Shainman Gallery and Galerie Barbara Thumm / Julian Salinas
The exhibition "The Evidence of Things Not Seen" is the titled of the first exhibition of the artist in Switzerland, and one of the most important and inclusive exhibitions regarding the history of violence against Black and Indigenous people and the presence of what is disregarded or not shown.
Weems appears in many of her own works (since the beginning of her career), guiding us to forgotten moments in history/events whose lingering effects are palpable in society even today. By including her in her own story, she became the dominant figure of an historical narrative and reveal how they are produced and reproduced by politics, scholarship, art, mass media, photography, and architecture.
Thus, she became both the subject and objects, both director and performer of her works. Most of her works are thus becoming a series, a story which tells an effort to reeducate other cultures in the U.S., but also between races and cultural and historical moment in the country.
Thus, the display at the Kunstmuseum Basel is based on the exhibitions "The Evidence of Things Not Seen" from the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (April 2–August 21, 2022), "A Great Turn in The Possible" from the Fundación MAPFRE and Fundación Foto Colectania, Barcelona (October 5, 2022–January 15, 2023), and "Reflections for Now", from the Barbican Centre, London (June 22–September 3, 2023). But compare to the other venus; the exhibition's titled is borrowed from the eponymous book by the African-American activist and writer James Baldwin, an extended meditation on the murders of thirty Black children and teenagers in Atlanta in 1979– 1981—and the authorities’ turning a blind eye to these crimes.
In my own opinion, the most profound works of the whole exhibition are the following.
"The Louisiana Project. Missing Link" from 2003 is based on Mardi Gras, the carnival tradition brought to New Orleans by Catholics of French ancestry. Thus, the 1873 Mardi Gras featured a racist parade section titled "The Missing Links to Darwin’s Origin of Species" with costumes that alleged the evolutionary otherness and inferiority of people of color, a direct attack on the growing social mobility of Black people in the American South.
"All the Boys" from 2016 combines anonymized portraits of young Black men which responded to the unending series of acts of often lethal violence visited on young African-American men by police in the U.S. By subjecting the people in the images to controlled blurring, Weems distorts the stereotypical representation of people who are often branded as "usual suspects” and thus exposed to the real danger of becoming innocent victims.
In “The Kitchen Table Series”, from the early 1990s, Carrie Mae Weems presents a series of photographs accompanied by text panels, who transformed a kitchen table into the stage of a multitude of constructed scenes. In this work, Weems uses her own body in various private female roles, including those of mother, lover, friend, and caretaker as well as the object of her ministrations. Moreover, the kitchen table emblematizes the feminine private sphere. The texts on the panels revolve around the battle of the sexes and turn out to resonate with a multiplicity of voices. And they pick up on popular and demotic expressions, from films, TV shows, gospel, jazz, and rock songs.
In “Not Manet’s Type” from 2010, the artist addresses the role that women and women artists play in the history of classic modern art.In this picture, the mirror is an allegory of the gaze with which male artists behold the female body, thus becoming the passive object of desire and contemplation. In the texts bellow the picture, Weems disrupts this division of duties, taking charge of the narrative, and offers her views on its male heroes such as the French avant-garde painters Édouard Manet (1832 – 1883) and Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973) and the American abstract painter Willem de Kooning (1904– 1997).
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Kunstmuseum Basel
Date: 26.10.2023 - 7.4.2024
Curator: Maja Wismer and Alice Wilke
Ticket: Available on the website of the Kunstmuseum Basel OR at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Kunstmuseum Basel
Kunstmuseum Basel
St. Alban-Graben 8
CH-4010 Basel
Phone: +41 61 206 62 62
Fax: +41 61 206 62 52
Mail: info@kunstmuseumbasel.ch