Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections For Now – Barbican, London

The Barbican’s timely survey of Carrie Mae Weems’ work is a perfect introduction for UK audiences to Weems’ immense talent and reflections on the Black experience.

Carrie Mae Weems

This is the third monographic exhibition of a female artist’s work in a row for the Barbican. Late last year we had Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics, followed by Alice Neel: Hot Off the Griddle. Correction: it’s the third exhibition of an American female artist’s work. Does the Barbican have a special interest they haven’t told us about? To be clear I’m talking here about the main Barbican Art Gallery, not their Curve space which tends to be a little more varied.

So Carrie Mae Weems is an American artist, we know that much. She is pretty well known in her home country, and at 70 is making some of her best work. She is less well known in the UK, making this another good choice from the Barbican to bring an artist to wider attention through a well-curated survey.

Reflections for Now includes work from the last few decades. But the focus, as the title suggests, is very much contemporary. It starts with a flourish. The first room, typically the earliest work in a retrospective, is a series from 2021. In response to the protests following the killing of George Floyd in 2020, Weems shot a series of photographs of boarded up shops in Portland, Oregon, the protesters’ slogans painted over as fast as they can put them up. The works are disorienting: looking so much like paintings at first glance I thought I was looking at canvases by Forrest Bess. But no, as much as they look like abstract works, the images are a complex commentary: both on the silencing of protesters, and the exclusion of black voices from the Abstract Expressionist narrative.

Reflections For Now

The exhibition continues to subvert our expectations throughout. We see photographic series and documented performance art. Next comes an installation – Land of Broken Dreams: a Case Study Room – a furnished room with images of leading Black Power figures, a copy of Weems’ encyclopedia on the History of Violence, and View-Masters you can pick up and interact with. It all builds as we move downstairs towards 2021’s The Shape of Things: a Film in Seven Parts. This immense, panoramic projection combines news footage with more lyrical sequences. The Jan 6th Insurrection rubs shoulders with, among other things, performer and choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili surrounded by paper falling in slow motion. The full cycle lasts 40 minutes, during which time you will be confronted with a sort of American ‘State of the Nation’.

And this is the key to the exhibition. Weems returns again and again to the Black experience in the United States. Or not so much returns to it, as centres it. It’s an ever-present thread, stitching the various works together across decades and subjects. From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995-6) explores how photography has been used to perpetuate racial violence. Kitchen Table Series (1990) brings Black women to the forefront and looks at self-emancipation. It’s Over: a Diorama (2021) pays tribute to Black people who have lost their lives to police brutality in the US. Weems’ very personal responses guide us through the current state of affairs in the United States and its impact on Black lives. Given the depth of her work, it’s almost like she has seen the writing on the wall all along. The series from the 1990s onwards lead us inexorably towards today’s increasingly divided society.

An Artistic Polymath

What surprised me most about Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now were the many strings to her bow. With a little more understanding of her journey as an artist, it’s perhaps less unexpected. Born in 1953 in Portland, Oregon, she showed an interest in dance and theatre from an early age. Aged 17 she set out to study modern dance under Anna Halprin, before focusing on art. She graduated from the California Institute of the Arts aged 28 before pursuing an MFA. Weems was politically active as a union organiser from her early 20s.

From the beginning, Weems’ work has combined these threads of multiple disciplines, political engagement, and awareness of her body. She has consistently confronted both racism and sexism in her work, which aims to represent excluded subjects and tell their stories. Just in this one exhibition, her techniques range from performance to photography to film to even a Pepper’s Ghost. Furthermore, Weems has consistently and eloquently articulated the meaning and thought behind her work. The Barbican acknowledges this, accompanying every room with a quote. It’s a tremendous insight into the artist’s practice and thought process. If you take the time to watch several collated lectures downstairs, you will come away with even more admiration.

Final Thoughts

The exhibition was not without a few minor drawbacks. The main one for me was that it needed more sound isolation. I struggled to make out the soundtrack to Holocaust Memorial (2013) because The Shape of Things was leaking through from downstairs. I don’t know how you would achieve this, but it was a minor inconvenience. Likewise some of the wall texts, printed so small visitors clustered around them. Minor inconvenience in an otherwise excellent exhibition.

I commented when I saw Alice Neel: Hot Off the Griddle that I felt the Barbican had paired a female artist with a rather ‘soft’ exhibition design. Like the femininity had been inescapable (or unconscious). I thought the same to a lesser extent here. I just don’t remember so many soft dividing curtains when it’s been a male artist or a group show. Food for thought.

Overall this is an excellent and immensely rewarding exhibition. I’m glad Weems is getting this recognition in the UK. Like Neel, this is the largest survey of her work in this country to date. In our trying times I both look forward to seeing Weems’ continued work, and regret that her voice remains so urgent and necessary. Several of the series I saw in Reflections for Now will stay with me for some time.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 4/5

Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections For Now on until 3 September 2023