AND A guilty delay we are talking about with, but the exhibition had to be seen and studied.
The work of Carrie Mae Weems It is imposing, complex and articulated therefore the exposure is unmissable.
Those who do not know it will be grateful to have insisted and solicited a visit to Galleries of Italy in Turin. While those who know it will find in this exhibition a wide vision of its work. Without a doubt of all the artists present on the contemporary panorama you are among the most influential.
His work was an important point of reference for contemporaries and subsequent generations. Inspiration for women, preparatory for men and for all other genres, This US artist, born in Portland, Oregon, in 1953, works with photography, videos, installations, texts and performances dealing with identity, race, genre, social class, power and stereotypes, with deep attention to African American experience and women. For us he did a lot.
In the large exhibition, among the series on display, there is the commissioning of Intesa Sanpaolo which has allowed to expand Preach, Project that investigates religion and spirituality for American Afrodiscendants. Weems brings to light churches, places and cults, photographed in black and white and exhibited with a strange setting -out choice – desired by the artist itself – where the theme is treated with great and austere seriousness in which photography digs in the depth of the religious experience of the community and the poetic text that accompanies it is an ode, a prayer. Although important, it is certainly the least exciting chapter of this imposing exhibition that welcomes a sort of summary of Weems’ artistic action throughout his journey.
An image of the installation – Photo by Andrea Guermani
50 years of work, an extraordinary awareness and the ability to move from one language to another, changing code, subverting rules, questioning itself first of all and then scandling the past to recover memory, without losing sight of the present still so full of injustice. Multifaceted and committed, his approach is strongly characterized by his subjectivity. He declares it:
“I seriously started photographing myself and I discovered that I am both subject and agent, participant and observer. I discovered that I was the point of reference and the point of view.”
The entrance of the exhibition at the Italy Galleries in Turin – Photo by Andrea Guermani
Speaks of himself but The roar of his work by the staff expands to the universal. This is the figure and extraordinary wealth of this artist who has put himself at the center of his work to speak to everyone about the great themes of our time.
If we do not start from ourselves, what depth can we touch and what honesty can we say?
It looks like the tacit warning that crosses the whole work underground and we never escapes, indeed it builds its narrative.
Strong of an important and performative scenic presence learned during its training with the San Francisco Dancers’ Workshopthe artist is very often the protagonist of the work, as in the famous and wonderful Kitchen Table Series (1990).
Colei that distinguishes many productions, declares Weems, is my muse, but in reality it is my alter ego.
Thus the representation of one’s body, a black body, becomes an element that gives authenticity and focuses on the representation that black women have undergone from the white patriarchal culture. A body that is subject, not only authentic, but also and above all militant. The commitment and activism have characterized the entire artist’s path by giving a vibrant emotion to his works.
It often does not happen to cross the rooms of an exhibition and to warn the sense of spirituality Which emanates from the individual works and which now, in this exhibition capable of offering a wide gaze on the work of the Weems, becomes a chorus, a magnificent gospel that overwhelms us in a visual and sound vortex. In addition to the photographic images, entering the world of his videos is another opportunity for immersive experience: The Shape of Things Of 2021, archival and original video to celebrate the resilience of the black community, it is an example, but all the others have strength and expressive capacity and its voice, magnetic as its figure, resonates among the images with an uncommon force.
Carrie Mae Weems knows what it means and carefully chooses the way to do it. As Sarah Meister says, the curator:
“Weems forces us not only to hear but to listen, not only to look but to see.”
We could add: to be all part of that large community that is the human race.
A conceptual artist who does not fear the mixing of languages, strong of the ethics that animates his work, the Weems grants experiments and contaminations.
Photography is the medium that intertwines activism, this is the sense of the long and important journey that has made the gaze of Carrie Mae Weems a visual and poetic battle to eradicate discrimination and injustices from this world.
The exhibition, curated by Sarah Meister is a production of Gallerie d’Italia with Openings. The catalog, full of contributions from critics and scholars of the Weems’ work, is the result of a collaboration between the publishing house Allesses And the American openings.
Carrie Mae Weems: “The Heart of the Matter”
Galleries of Italy
Piazza San Carlo Turin
Until 7 September