Carrie Mae Weems has first solo show in Africa
THE GOODMAN Gallery in Johannesburg has announced Carrie Mae Weems’s first solo exhibition on the continent, Over Time, to open on September 7.
The gallery said Weems was considered one of the most influential contemporary American artists.
Using photography, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation and video, Weems compels viewers to actively consider how the world is structured, bringing to light systems of oppression and inequality while exploring the relationships between power, class, race and gender.
Over Time presents several bodies of work which look at these themes in relation to how the past comes to bear on the present.
Weems is the recipient of prestigious awards, grants and fellowships, including the BET Honours Visual Artist award, the MacArthur “Genius” grant, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Prix de Roma.
“Her work is in public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles,” the gallery said.
Over Time will be accompanied by an installation of Kudzanai Chiurai’s collection of vinyl records, which include Zimbabwean Chimurenga and South African anti-apartheid Struggle music and rare recordings of speeches by Ian Smith, Kwame Nkrumah, Mobutu Sese Seko, Dr Martin Luther King and a re-enactment of the trial of Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale.