Carrie Mae Weems | London 2023

Goodman Gallery is pleased to present iconic works by Carrie Mae Weems in a special viewing room exhibition spread across two lower ground spaces at the gallery – organised in collaboration with Jack Shainman Gallery and Galerie Barbara Thumm. The show runs concurrently to the artist’s largest UK exhibition to date at The Barbican, Reflections for Now (22 June – 3 September).

Steeped in African American history, Weems’s photographs and videos explore race, family, class, and gender identity. The artist, who has also worked in verse and performance, embraces activism throughout all her work—in particular, she looks to history in order to better understand the present. In the early 1990s, Weems rose to prominence with her “Kitchen Table” series: intimate black-and-white photographs that undermine tropes of African American life and womanhood as they depict the artist seated at her kitchen table alone or alongside various other characters.

The Louisiana Project (2003) examines the distant past of slaveholding and the state’s recent present, characterized by economic crisis and racial segregation. It takes as its starting point the ubiquitous New Orleans festival Mardi Gras as well as the parades and balls associated with all-white groups who parade through the streets during the annual celebration of Carnival.