Wright Auction

American multidisciplinary artist Carrie Mae Weems was born in Portland, Oregon and joined Anna Halprin’s experimental San Francisco Dancers' Workshop at just 17 years old. In 1976, she moved to New York where she took photography classes at the Studio Museum in Harlem before returning to the West Coast where she earned a BA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia (1981) and a MFA in photography from the University of California, San Diego (1984). After earning her degrees, Weems spent three years studying folklore at University of California, Berkeley.

From an early point in her career, Weems recognized photography’s potential to explore black cultural mythologies and dismantle negative social preconceptions. Over time she branched out into video and performance art as well, providing additional outlets through which she can pose questions about race, gender, and class inequality. Her landmark The Kitchen Table Series (1990) featured herself as the recurring subject in a series of photographs at a single kitchen table, by herself or with others, thereby centering the the commonly overlooked roles of women in the home. More recently, in 2006, her Roaming series of photographs shows Weems’ alter ego in various landscapes and famous cities throughout Italy. The works feature Weems in a long dark dress, her back to the camera, and ask the viewer to share her perspective in relation to these recognizable and historically charged places.

In the 21st century, Weems expanded her practice to include community outreach. She is a co-founder of the artist collective Social Studies 101 (2002), which ran an anti-violence campaign, Operation Activate (2011) in Syracuse, and launched a mentorship program called the Institute of Sound and Style in 2012. Weems has been the subject of many solo surveys, as well as a traveling retrospective organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville and presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2014). She is also the recipient of numerous honors, including the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1993), Herb Alpert Award in the Visual Arts (1996), Rome Prize (2005–06), and a MacArthur Fellowship (2013).