My responsibility as an artist is to work, to sing for my supper, to make art, beautiful and powerful, that adds and reveals; to beautify the mess of a messy world, to heal the sick and feed the helpless; to shout bravely from the roof-tops and storm barricaded doors and voice the specificity of our historical moment."

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Weems produces art that addresses formal and political issues encircling African-American culture and focuses on the ways in which images shape our perception of color, gender and class. She explores existing genres of photography, particularly documentary imagery, and manipulates these conventions with complexity and wit. Whether focusing on personal or cultural history, on Africa or on traces of the Diaspora, Weems' interest in the narratives implied in photographs presses further through the use of cluster and sequence. Using narrative as a counterpoint to imagery, she recounts stories and myths and invents texts. Provocatively, she moves marginalized voices smack into the middle of contemporary discourse.

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Born 1953, Portland, Oregon

1984-87 Graduate Program in Folklore, University of California, Berkeley
1984 MFA, University of California, San Diego
1981 BA, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA.



1995 Project Room, Museum of Modern Art, New York
1995 The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu
1993-95 "Carrie Mae Weems," exhibition traveling to nine sites including: Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
1991 "And 22 Million Very Tired and Very Angry People," The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York
1991 Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston


1994 National Endowment for the Arts, Visual Arts Fellowship
1994 Photographer of the Year awarded by the Friends of Photography, San Francisco
1993 New England Foundation for the Arts, Visual Arts Award
1992 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award