The Long Goodbye, Carrie Mae Weems
18 April – 18 October 2026
V&A East Museum
Artist Carrie Mae Weems believes ‘love stories are embedded in every migration story — those who we leave behind, those who we meet upon arrival, and what allows a new place to begin to feel like home.’
In this film, Weems traces how bodies of water, from their sweeping currents to soft tides, have shaped us, enabling transatlantic migration and continuing to impact communities in east London and beyond. The work explores the creation of new identities and artistic forms by the immigrants who have relocated across oceans, both voluntarily and by force.
Weems celebrates the cultural diversity that connects and underpins the foundations of contemporary cities. Transcending fear and adversity, water and networks of migration are the fuel of global creativity.
Edited by Carrie Mae Weems, Atagun Ilhan, and Yao Xu. This presentation has been supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art
Artist Bio
Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953, Portland, Oregon) lives and works in Syracuse, New York. Recent exhibitions include The Heart of the Matter at Gallerie d'Italia, Painting the Town at the Rijksmuseum, Remember to Dream at CCS Bard Hessel, Carrie Mae Weems: The Shape of Things at LUMA Arles, Reflections for Now at Barbican Art Gallery in London, The Evidence of Things Not Seen, organized by Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart and thereafter traveled to Kunstmuseum Basel, as well as Carrie Mae Weems: Remember to Dream at Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College. In the spring of 2023, Weems served as the inaugural Agnes Gund Professor of the Practice of Arts and Social Justice at Brown University, a residency that culminated in the campus-wide activation collectively titled Varying Shades of Brown.
Weems has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships, including a National Medal of Arts, Hasselblad Award, the Bernd and Hilla Becher Prize, the MacArthur “Genius” grant, the US State Department’s Medal of Arts, the Joseph Hazen Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, NEA grants, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award, among others. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and The Tate Modern, London, among others.
