Artist Talk with Carrie Mae Weems

The conversation centres on the power of representation and the significance of places as sites of power and memory – from private interiors, through institutions and monuments, to landscapes in which history has been inscribed.

The artist talk offers insights into Weems’ visual language – as poetic as it is political – and into the artistic strategies through which she creates visibility, challenges established narratives and links personal experiences with collective memory.

Carrie Mae Weems (born 1953, Portland, Oregon, USA) is one of the most influential contemporary artists, whose work challenges conventional perspectives on history. For more than four decades, she has been developing a multi-layered body of work comprising photography, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation and video, which gives a voice to people and stories that have long been overlooked or silenced. She has received numerous awards for her artistic work, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the National Medal of Arts, the Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Her works are held in major collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Tate Modern in London.