Africa Series, Carrie Mae Weems (1993) (EMPIRE LINES x Kunstmuseum Basel)

Curator Alice Wilke transports from Switzerland to sub-Saharan cities in Africa, tracing Carnival traditions across continents, via Carrie Mae Weems’ 20th century wallpapers, ceramic plates, and photographs.

In 1993, the North American artist Carrie Mae Weems undertook a ‘pilgrimage’ to West Africa to discover her heritage. With photographs of historic architectures, former slave sites, and colonies, she seeks to retell histories about the origins of civilisation - but ones which also highlight her position as a contemporary artist practicing from a diaspora.

As The Evidence of Things Not Seen - the final stop on Weems’ current ‘world tour’ of exhibitions - opens in Switzerland, curator Alice Wilke talks about how the show has changed from between the Barbican, in London, and Basel. Starting with the Missing Link series (2003), we consider the particular history of Carnival in Basel, a time of social and political critique, and tradition with unexpected connections to the Caribbean. We see how Weems relocates celebrated - and celebrity - Black women like Mary J. Blige in her practice, composing photographs like Baroque paintings to play on conventions of Western/European art, and keep stories alive through their retelling. Moving through Weems’ wider work, we consider the racism, internalised shadism, and hyper-visibility of Black people in society, and what European institutions haven’t yet seen, in their under-representation of POC artists.

Carrie Mae Weems. The Evidence of Things Not Seen runs at the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland until 7 April 2024.

For more, you can read my article in Shade Art Review: shadepodcast.substack.com/p/jelena-sofronijevic-revisits-carriePart of JOURNEYS, a series of episodes leading to EMPIRE LINES at 100.

Return to Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now at the Barbican in London, with curator Florence Ostende’s EMPIRE LINES episode on From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried (1995-1996): pod.link/1533637675/episode/b4e1a077367a0636c47dee51bcbbd3da

For more about Weems’ wallpapers, read about BLACK VENUS: Reclaiming Black Women in Visual Culture at Somerset House, in gowithYamo: gowithyamo.com/blog/reclaiming-visual-culture-black-venus-at-somerset-house

For more about Dogon architecture in Africa, listen to Dr. Peter Clericuzio’s episode on The Great Mosque(s) of Djenné, Mali, on EMPIRE LINES: pod.link/1533637675/episode/079e9ccf333c54e7116ce0f9a6e7a70c

WITH: Alice Wilke, assistant curator at the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland. She has worked as a research assistant at the city’s HGK FHNW Art Institute, where she supervised the podcast series Promise No Promises!, the Kunsthalle Göppingen, and the Museum Tinguely. She is the assistant curator of The Evidence of Things Not Seen, with curator Maja Wismer.

ART: ‘Africa Series, Carrie Mae Weems (1993)’.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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