LIGHTBOX: Artes Mundi 9: Carrie Mae Weems

LIGHTBOX: Artes Mundi 9: Carrie Mae Weems

05.02.2021 - 06.06.2021

Carrie Mae Weems is one of the most influential contemporary American artists working today, who for over thirty years has, through her work, investigated and focused on the serious issues that face African Americans, centred on family relationships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems and the consequences of power. More recently she sees her work as speaking beyond the immediate Black experience to encompass the complexity of broader human knowledge, understanding and social inclusion.

Presented in the Lightbox and Cafe Bar, are a two large-scale billboard pieces and a selection of posters from Weems’ recent and ongoing public art campaign, RESIST COVID TAKE 6! These works focus on the global pandemic that continues to affect us all, and in particular its impact on people of colour. Here image and text combine to speak toward a more hopeful future.

About the artist
Carrie Mae Weems, born 1953, USA, lives and works in Syracuse and New York. She is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin.

About Artes Mundi
Artes Mundi is an internationally focused arts organisation that identifies, recognises and supports contemporary visual artists who engage with the human condition, social reality and lived experience.

It remains the UK’s largest contemporary art prize with £40,000 prize money and has previously been awarded to Theaster Gates (2015), John Akomfrah (2017), and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (2019).

This year’s shortlist was selected by a jury made up of Cosmin Costinas, Executive Director and Curator of Para Site, Hong Kong and Artistic Director of Kathmandu Triennale 2020; Elvira Dyangani-Ose, Director of The Showroom gallery in London; and Rachel Kent, Chief Curator at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia.