REVIEW | CARRIE MAE WEEMS ‘REFLECTIONS FOR NOW’ AT THE BARBICAN

For a long time, I’ve engaged in an on-going con­ver­sa­tion in my head, debat­ing wheth­er art is an indul­gent gift – to both make and exper­i­ence – or some­thing deeply vital to exist­ence, to human life, to mak­ing social impact, to genu­ine change. My pos­i­tion has fluc­tu­ated con­stantly in the now dec­ades I’ve been hav­ing this dis­cus­sion with myself. In my cur­rent stance (that might change again) I’m less con­cerned with hav­ing a defin­it­ive answer, but am largely con­vinced that there’s no ‘either/or’ choice to be made. The state­ments don’t neg­ate each oth­er. It is a genu­ine lux­ury to spend hours in an art space or listen­ing to music, breath­ing in the work, reflect­ing on the feel­ings and pro­voca­tions it gives, nev­er mind ded­ic­at­ing a life to study­ing and play­ing with tech­niques and medi­ums to inter­pret, express and pass on these thoughts in your own way. How­ever, I now feel very strongly that this exper­i­ence is essen­tial for some people’s exist­ence, that it greatly bene­fits humans in gen­er­al and, import­antly, can incite with­in people the motiv­a­tion, means and abil­ity to think, act and feel dif­fer­ently than they did before exper­i­en­cing giv­en pieces of work.

I think this is one defin­i­tion of social change, espe­cially when the rami­fic­a­tions of this pro­cess hap­pen­ing over and again, mak­ing infin­ite over­lap­ping ripples in the world, is prop­erly taken into con­sid­er­a­tion. There are many art­works, many artists, that poses the power to pro­foundly impact audi­ences is this way. When that hap­pens, the effects can change people. Car­rie Mae Weems is undoubt­ably such an artist; I know because her work changed me.

When I was around 18, dis­cov­er­ing who I am, defin­ing what pur­pose I’d strive to achieve in my life, I’d spend a lot of time in museums and pub­lic art gal­ler­ies. In Lon­don the big ones are free. This is import­ant when you don’t have much money. I’d go and take the free edu­ca­tion and try to recon­cile the ten­sions between acknow­ledging how for­tu­nate I was to have access to so many resources, while study­ing how intric­ately inter­woven these insti­tu­tions are to colo­ni­al and imper­i­al dom­in­a­tion, and how so many of the things I’d be look­ing at were largely products of the pil­lage cent­ral to the the gen­o­cide of my people and now were used to sus­tain the world built through this per­vas­ive violence.

It was on one of these trips to Tate Mod­ern that I stumbled across ‘From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried’. In a build­ing made to dic­tate the leg­acy of a man who profited from indus­tri­al­ised plant­a­tion slavery and one of its primary crops, amongst work that (I con­sidered at that time) often objec­ti­fies, divides, trivi­al­ises, dis­tracts and pla­cates, I found some­thing that spoke to me, about me, across time and space, con­nect­ing me to my Ancest­ors and my Des­cend­ants, under­min­ing the lies told about us, cel­eb­rat­ing our res­ol­ute­ness, the resi­li­ence passed down through gen­er­a­tions. The work spoke vis­cer­ally, with a defi­ant fist, a tender touch, a cav­ernous empathy, sor­row­ful wail and lov­ing embrace. The mas­ter­piece of visu­al, mul­ti­form poetry repur­poses pho­to­graphs inten­ded to dehu­man­ise Afric­an and Afric­an dia­spor­ic people and uses them to instead tell the story of our endur­ing human­ity. It speaks to and through the intergen­er­a­tion­al deprav­ity that has been waged against us, but also the lives we have used to res­ist against, sur­vive and flour­ish with­in, though not without grave costs.

I wandered around the room, absorb­ing each ele­ment and the whole piece for a very long time. I don’t know how long. It was the first piece of visu­al art in a fam­ous gal­lery that had ever moved me in this way. I didn’t truly under­stand the impact it had made on me until I was stood in front of it again, 18 years later, at Car­rie Mae Weems first major solo exhib­i­tion in bri­tain at the Bar­bican. Weems is a giant of con­tem­por­ary art. Pro­lif­ic, wide reach­ing in sub­ject and scope. It says more about the ‘art world’ in bri­tain than her that this is her first show of this scale here. But it is here now…and it is spec­tac­u­lar.

‘Car­rie Mae Weems: Reflec­tions for Now’ brings togeth­er major works that span her life and career, with a focus on the past 30 years. You are treated to an oppor­tun­ity to exper­i­ence the power of her in-depth invest­ig­a­tion of Afric­an dia­spor­ic life, centered in the united states but with glob­al resonance.

Among many con­nec­ted themes, Weems’ work pushes the bound­ar­ies of mul­tiple media, includ­ing lan­guage, and exam­ines the nature of power, time, social rela­tion­ships and hier­arch­ies, what it is to be a woman, Black­ness and cru­cially, the viol­ence of white­ness that soci­ety and the indi­vidu­als who con­struct it have been sub­jec­ted to.

In the first of two talks I was hon­oured to hear her give, in the groves of the Barbican’s Con­ser­vat­ory, Weems expressed that although her work may be con­sidered primar­ily ‘for’ and ‘from’ Black people, it is as much about white­ness as it is about Black­ness, as the two are so intim­ately connected.

Weems spoke of her prac­tice, beau­ti­fully describ­ing the rites and ritu­al of using music to set the tone and rhythm of her day as she begins to write, jour­ney­ing through these portals to the space from which cre­ation comes through her and into her pho­to­graphy, film, install­a­tions and more, all of which she describes as ‘texts’ — con­structs through which ideas can be chan­nelled into and com­mu­nic­ated from. The exhib­i­tion flows like a text writ­ten from such a per­spect­ive. After enter­ing the main door, you’re guided to the gallery’s stair­case, where you can feel the omin­ous, darkened realm above, draw­ing you in. The incred­ible cur­a­tion of Weems, Florence Ostende and Raúl Muñoz de la Vega has cre­ated a power­ful Space­time with­in which the uni­verse that Weems has spent her life cul­tiv­at­ing and tra­vers­ing is expan­ded and con­tained for us to explore.

With Time so cent­ral to her works, it is poet­ic­ally adept that, for a ret­ro­spect­ive, the audi­ence enter at the present. One of Weems’ latest works ‘Paint­ing the Town’ (2021), a series of pho­tos that at first glance appear as paint­ings, demon­strate imme­di­ately what is so power­ful about Weems’ work. This lack of imme­di­ate clar­ity in medi­um delays the real­isa­tion that the focus of this series is indeed paint; slo­gans painted in protest painted over to pro­ject an oppress­ive per­spect­ive. Weems and her team cap­tured the after­math of the 2020 upris­ings in the united states, spe­cific­ally Port­land, and the response of the city’s admin­is­tra­tion and busi­nesses to blot out the graf­fiti left on walls and build­ings. Weems has edited the pic­tures to resemble work from the abstract expres­sion­ist move­ment, draw­ing par­al­lels with how Black artists were painted out of the move­ment, just as calls for justice and affirm­a­tions on the sanc­tity of Black life were erased from the city.

From this sug­ges­ted start­ing point, the cur­a­tion moves between time­less pieces, often set to the son­ic back­drop of the epic ‘The Shape of Things’ (2021) that leaks out of its pan­or­amic amphi­theatre, adding to the exper­i­ence of many oth­er pieces, soaked audi­ences in its ambi­ence. One of these pieces is the icon­ic ‘Kit­chen Table Series’ which was also brought to life as a dir­ect influ­ence of the impec­cable ‘The Score(s): III’ per­formed by the amaz­ing i.as.in.we (Yewande YoYo Odunubi and Rohan Ayinde), one of the many bril­liant events that cel­eb­rated the open­ing of the exhib­i­tion. Anoth­er of these was the second talk I got to exper­i­ence, an hour-long key­note in the Frobish­er Aud­it­or­i­um. Weems per­form­ance was cap­tiv­at­ing, open­ing by dan­cing to Aretha Frank­lin and Frank Sinatra, out­lining her per­spect­ive on inter­pret­a­tion and artistry before guid­ing us sin­cerely, uncom­prom­isingly self-assured through a life­time of mak­ing, wit­ness­ing, for­ging and kick­ing down doors.

Car­rie Mae Weems is a force, of nature, to be reckoned with, to be exper­i­enced. She spoke with such poignancy about how so many Afric­an (par­tic­u­larly Amer­ic­an) women, des­pite being recog­nised for their excel­lence and influ­ence, spend their later life unap­pre­ci­ated, under­val­ued and often alone. This exhib­i­tion, I hope, demon­strates that this will not hap­pen to her; it can­not be allowed to hap­pen. Hav­ing now been 3 times – I might even go again – be good to your­self, go exper­i­ence this before it ends on Septem­ber 3^rd, and con­trib­ute to step­ping this hope into real­ity. This is her first ret­ro­spect­ive in bri­tain, but it should not be her last.

For more inform­a­tion, watch the trail­er and pro­mo­tion­al inter­view below (with the amaz­ing Ron­an McK­en­zie) and fol­low the link. Fri­day from 5pm-8pm ‘pay what you can’ tick­ets are avail­able, and there are still access­ib­il­ity ses­sions available.

Info and Tick­ets: https://www.barbican.org.uk/CarrieMaeWeems

 

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