Carrie Mae Weems- Makayla Stovall

Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems is a contemporary artist from Portland, Oregon. She was born in 1953. She trained in dance with the postmodern dancer Anna Halprin. She studied at the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, in 1981, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts. She earned her Master of Fine arts at the University of California, San Diego in 1984. She then continued her studies in the Graduate program in Folklore at the University of California, Berkeley. Weems’ is best known for her photography creates art while working with text, video and audio installation, and digital images. Her first camera was given to her as a present from her boyfriend on her 20^th birthday. When she first picked up the camera, she thought to herself, “Oh okay, this is my tool. This is It.” She has always had a powerful desire to create images.

Weems moved to Syracuse, New York in 1996 to be with her husband, Jeffrey Hoone, though majority of her family remains on the west coast. Weems’ mother, also named Carrie, her daughter faith, and many of her aunts and uncles appear in her early work.

Through her work, she investigates relationships, family, sexism, political systems, class, and the consequences of power, along with her views on global struggles for equality and justice. African Americans are primarily her main subject, but a concept of universality is present. Weems has stated that she wants “people of color to stand for the human multitudes” and for her art to resonate with audiences of all races. Over the years, she has engaged and participated in various solo and group exhibitions at notable national and international museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Frist Center for Visual Art, Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York, as well as the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo in Seville, Spain.

Carrie Mae Weems has been presented with an abundance of grants, awards and fellowships. The Prix de Roma, The Anonymous was a Woman, The National Endowment of the Arts, The Tiffany Awards, and the Alpert have all been awarded to her. She was one of the first people to be given the US Department of State’s Medals of Arts in acknowledgement for her dedication to the State Department’s Art in Embassies program. She also was presented the MacArthur “Genius” grant, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013, the Lucie Award for Fine Art, and the BET Honors Visual Artist Award. She was one of the four artists recognized at the Guggenhiem’s 2014 International Gala, and an recipient of the ICP Spotlights Award from the International Center of Photography.

The Kitchen Table Series:

This is one of her most well know photography projects. It is a story of a “self- possessed woman with a bodacious manner, varied talents, hard laughter, and multiple opinions.”This is the series that formed her career and inspired a new generation of Artists. The New York Time Style Magazine describes this body of work to represent the first time an African American Women could recognized her own self and experience in her art.

http://carriemaeweems.net/galleries/kitchen-table.html

Frist Center for Visual Art:

https://fristartmuseum.org/calendar/detail/carrie-mae-weems-three-decades-of-photography-and-video