Not Manet’s Type, 2010. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

The Annual Murray Pepper & Vicki Reynolds Pepper Distinguished Visiting Artist Lecture
Thursday, September 19, 2013, 4:15–5:30 p.m.
George C.S. Benson Auditorium, Pitzer College

Thinking through three decades worth of work, renowned American artist Carrie Mae Weems ponders the relationship of her work to the history of modernism, specifically through the lens of black cultural production which has been seen as distant from modernism and therefore undervalued and underappreciated.

Carrie Mae Weems’ extensive body of work employs photographs, text, fabric, audio, installation and video.  Weems’ work explores the relationship between power and aesthetics and articulates broad social truths through the prism of personal biography, self-portraiture and African-American heritage to examine class and gender issues, scrutinize subjectivity and debunk racist and sexist labels.

Weems earned a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia (1981) and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego (1984), continuing her studies in the Graduate Program in Folklore at the University of California, Berkeley (1984-87).  In 2005 she was honored with the Distinguished Photographer’s Award in recognition of her significant contributions to the world of photography. Since 1980 Weems’ work has been exhibited widely in the United States and abroad in over fifty one-person shows and numerous group exhibitions. A major touring solo retrospective Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video will culminate in 2014 at the Guggenheim Museum, New York.