Reflections for Now
Carrie Mae Weems
Hatje Cantz
English
Softcover
176 pages
160 × 230 mm
2024
ISBN 9783775755559
Widely considered to be one of the most influential American living artists, Carrie Mae Weems has developed a practice celebrated for her exploration of cultural identity, power dynamics, desire, intimacy and social justice through a body of work that challenges the prevailing representations of race, gender, and class. Defined by the use of photography, installation, film, performance and textile, her remarkably diverse and radical practice questions dominant ideologies and historical narratives created and disseminated within science, architecture, and mass media. Published in the context of her solo exhibitions at Barbican Art Gallery London and Kunstmuseum Basel, this book brings together a selection of Weems’ own writings, lectures, and conversations for the first time, providing personal insights into themes such as the consequences of power, artistic appropriation, music as inspiration, history-making, and the normative role of architecture.
(Source: https://www.hatjecantz.com/products/65456-carrie-mae-weems?srsltid=AfmBOoqNKhiVbke_Cw-jD1mmWd4ewpvWCrksGnAkeM7nc0hHspc200MI)
About the Artist
Carrie Mae Weems is a widely influential American artist whose work gives voice to people whose stories have been silenced or ignored. Investigating history, identity, and power, she finds connections between personal experience and the larger structures and institutions that shape our lives. Over the course of forty years, she has built an acclaimed body of work using photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation, and video. Since the 1980s, Weems’s work has been seen around the world, and she has inspired a generation of artists with her poetic and original approach to storytelling. Throughout her career, Weems has exposed the belief systems that have maintained the status quo. In her iconic Kitchen Table Series, from 1990, Weems builds emotionally complex narratives through simply staged black and white photographs, casting herself in the role of lover, friend, mother, and solitary woman. The series depicts scenes that are both universal and specific to the Black lives they imagine. And 22 Million Very Tired and Very Angry People, 1989-1990, presents photographs of ordinary objects with captions that point to their use as tools for revolution. Bringing together these items with silk-screened banners of text, the piece addresses the power of collective action. With From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, 1995-96, Weems collects photographs of enslaved men and women and other Black subjects from museum and university archives. Pairing these images with powerful texts, Weems reveals the role photography has played in supporting and shaping racism.
https://www.carriemaeweems.net/
(Source: https://www.carriemaeweems.net/biography)
About the Publisher
Hatje Cantz is an international publisher of illustrated books on art, architecture, photography, design, and visual culture, founded by Gerd Hatje in Stuttgart in 1945. Since its inception, Hatje Cantz has been developing and publishing illustrated books with a special focus on quality, both in terms of content and production.
https://www.hatjecantz.com/
(Source: https://www.hatjecantz.com/pages/about-us)
