ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Although I am a second-year International Business student, I am greatly interested in the arts and its relation to social science. This led me to take an art history humanities class two semesters ago which made me aware of the importance of giving space to silenced voices within the art world. I took a lot of pleasure learning about an artist who creates a bridge between people and time in such a powerful manner. Special thanks to Professor Leanne D’Antoni for encouraging me to submit this paper for publication but mostly for opening my eyes to the lack of representation in academic curricula.

–Ashley Simo

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Carrie Mae Weems, born in 1953, is a contemporary American artist. Widely influential today, Weems started to gain success in the early 1990s for her focus on serious issues African-Americans face regularly. Mostly known for her photography series, the artist follows paths that subvert the American colonial gaze. It is through her art that Weems allows lived stories of African-American people to be seen and acknowledged by deconstructing and reconstructing the stereotypical narrative of Black people in her documentary and naturalistic photography practice. Weems fights misrepresentation and invisibility within the Black American community.

Weems’s photography expresses topics such as social inequity, inclusion, and individuality within the African American community. Weems’ mission is to provoke a conversation on social injustice and cultural violence faced by black people in the United States. Through her art, she wants to provoke a response to the historical dehumanization of African American people to not only teach about their history and struggle living in America but also to redefine concepts of grace, love, and justice (Liss 57, 73). As an artist, Weems gave herself the duty to portray history as it truly happened. Her photography series is a tool to subvert the colonial gaze by addressing the traumatic history of Black people in America that the colonizer downplays. In addition to forcing the viewer to become a witness to African American colonial history, Weems encourages them to open a discussion on how to build an American society that is based on empathy, acceptance, and social equity. Therefore, the artist engages in a deconstruction and reconstruction process of the Black American narrative. For decades, Weems has remained a spokeswoman of heavy cultural legacies paralleling her representation of intimate fraternal and platonic relationships within Black families (58). Weems dives deep within the everyday lived stories of Black people in America (Zarro 50). Where specific individual African-American experiences can serve as a portrayal of humanity, the purpose of Weems’ artworks is to not only recognize African Americans’ singular legacy, but also to reconstruct derogative stereotypes (50). Weems’ art weaves the universality of the African American experience with its individual distinctiveness by opening a discussion on the inclusive topic of intimate relationships, through a black lens. Following Delmez’s take on the subject, an essential aspect of Weems’s art is “to bring ignored or erased experiences to light,” and to “spur greater awareness and compassion” (50). The power in Weems’s artworks lies within her ability to deconstruct historically defined narratives as a means to create a space where the lives of people who have been undermined in the past can be heard and listened to (50). Zarro’s book review and references capture how, beyond being a spokesperson of the African-American community, Weems allows the voice of its members to be acknowledged. Still, her artworks encourage the Black community to mourn their past and redefine the way they portray themselves outside of the stereotypical limitations set by the colonizer.

Weems subverts the colonial gaze mainly by experimenting with a documentary and naturalistic style. The intercommunication between Weems’s documentary gaze and her narrative of self-portraiture in her photography series–such as Colored People, Ain’t Joking, All the Boys and more–creates a unique interaction between the traditionally motionless poses of the subjects and the observer’s gaze (Liss 57). Adding to her spokeswoman persona, the artist also becomes a performer (Zarro 50). She is an actor in her own work; thus, she becomes a subject of the stories she portrays and in which she plays the role of a guide who leads the viewer through the world of Black Americans (50). By exploring the life and challenges of Black people through a documentary gaze, Weems reminds the audience that her art is not just an artwork to look at and pass by; it is the reality in which people currently live. She may play a character; nonetheless, the stories portrayed remain authentic. Using herself as a subject of her own photography series allows Weems to close the gap between the viewer and the tragic but historical events that she conveys. Weems’ documentary technique is shown through multiples of her photography series, including “Slow Fade to Black” (2010-11), where the artist’s “powerful use of appropriation” is applied to portray the most notable Black female performers in history (Zarro 51). In her images, Weems intentionally blurred the subjects’ faces and bodies to the extreme (51). This stylistic choice serves as an allegory for society’s failure to ensure the remembrance of these pioneering black figures’ historical heritage (51). Consequently, Weems addresses the invisibility that Black women often face in world history (51). In fact, in his essay, Robert Storr considers that Weems’s goal behind the manipulation of the documentary practice is to “‘shed light on dark corners’” (qtd. in Zarro 50). Weems’ documentary practice becomes a tool for the life of Black Americans to be depicted as it truly happened. The artist takes her power back from the colonial misrepresentation of Black people in America. Instead, she promotes a story of the people narrated by the people. In addition, as Robert Storr claims, the purpose of Weems’ naturalistic approach includes holding up “‘positive examples of some aspect of the same reality’” (50). For instance, Cochran suggests that Weems’ “At the Table” series invokes stories which are displayed in such a way that is reminiscent of episodes of a developed drama (Weems and Cochran 711). Weems uses the domestic space to express themes such as social situations and roles played by members of society (711). Analyzing the use of light and props in Weems’s images, Cochran explains how these images seem to explore the way power exchanges are first taught and learned in the household before being adopted in public: “We can almost smell the tensions, not only between men and women but between adults and children as well” (711). Paralleling her illustration of past historical events through the documentary gaze, Weems also digs into reality in fiction. As an artist, Weems does not just tell stories; she writes them. Just like a multitude of renowned western artists have been portraying what they consider to be humanity (everyone excluding minorities) by use of their artistic skills, Weems provides another perspective on what it is like to be human as a Black individual in America, using her own personal and innovative artistic devices.

Carrie Mae Weems’ follows a path of subversion of the colonial gaze in American media. Weems’ innovative strategies to display the history as well as the modern issues faced by African Americans in the form of documentary and naturalistic techniques incite the construction of a black narrative told by one of its members. Weems’ ingenious perspective opens a dialogue on inevitable topics that American society wants to avoid addressing. Her artworks are educational for Americans as much as being empowering for Black people around the globe.

 

 

Works Cited

Liss, Andrea. “The Poetics of Carrie Mae Weems’s Documentary Portraits Past and Present”. Afterimage, vol. 46, no. 4, Dec. 2019, pp. 57–73. EBSCOhost.  

Weems, Carrie Mae, and Marie T. Cochran. “At the Table”. The Georgia Review, vol. 48, no. 4, 1994, pp. 711–20. JSTOR.

Zarro, Jennifer. “Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video” Woman’s Art Journal, vol. 35, no. 1, 2014, pp. 50–51. JSTOR.