Organized by the Louisiana State University Museum of Art and curated by Courtney Taylor, “Carrie Mae Weems: The Usual Suspects” includes recent photographic and video works by the renowned artist questioning stereotypes that associate Black bodies with criminality.
the National Endowment of the Arts, the Alpert, the Anonymous was a Woman and the Tiffany Awards, among many other honors. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at major national and international museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frist Center for Visual Art, Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville, Spain. She is represented in public and private collections around the world.
Images from her series “All the Boys” and “The Usual Suspects” implicate these stereotypes in the deaths of Black men and women at the hands of police and confront the viewer with the fact of judicial inaction. Blocks of color obscuring faces point to the constructed nature of our notions of race and how these imagined concepts obscure humanity — here with very real and deadly outcomes. “People of a Darker Hue,” a meditative compilation of video, found footage, narration and performance commemorates these deaths. Considered one of the most influential contemporary American artists, Carrie Mae Weems has investigated family relation- ships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems and the consequences of power. Determined as ever to enter the picture — both literally and metaphorically — she has sustained an ongoing dialogue within contemporary discourse for over 30 years. During this time Weems has developed a complex body of art employing photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital imag- es, installation and video. In 2013, Weems received the MacArthur “Genius” grant as well as the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Weems has received numerous awards, grants and fellowships including the prestigious Prix de Roma,
In-House Curator: Shawnya L. Harris, Larry D. and Brenda A. Thompson Curator of African American and African Diasporic Art
Carrie MaeWeems (American, b. 1953), “Color Real and Imagined,” 2014. Archival pigment with silkscreened color blocks, 30 � 48 inches.
Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953), “All the Boys (Profile 2),” 2016. Archival pigment on gesso board, 35 3/8 × 27 3/8 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. Carrie MaeWeems (American, b. 1953), “All the Boys (Blocked 2),” 2016. Archival pigment and silkscreened panel mounted on gesso board, 31 3/8 � 25 3/8 inches each. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
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