The past is never more than a step away in the work of artist Carrie Mae Weems, whose photography and film subverts African American stereotypes in unexpected and unusual ways. Fresh from a retrospective at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, Weems’ work from the past 30 years is now the subject of an exhibition at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in London – the artist’s first UK solo show.
Weems hovers on the periphery in the Kitchen Table series from 1990. In the triptych Untitled (Woman with Friends), she observes the life of a modern black woman (played by herself) in the context of a gathering which veers from grief-stricken to near joy borne of relief and acceptance. In the ’90s and early 2000s, Weems took up themes revolving around the history of race and geography in series such as Africa and Dreaming in Cuba, and particularly powerfully in the Slave Coast project. This series features her regular use of text alongside images in which the artist documents the holding cells of Gorée Island in Senegal, used to house African slaves before they were shipped across the Atlantic. Colored People sees the artist explore portraiture, pairing her subjects with colloquial terms used in the African American community to describe the beauty in “shades of blackness”. The exhibition runs at the Heddon Street gallery until 15 November.