The Gallerie d'Italia Turin, Intesa Sanpaolo Museum is presenting a comprehensive retrospective exhibition titled "Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter," featuring around one hundred works by the renowned conceptual artist. This extensive showcase offers an overview of Weems' entire body of work, demonstrating how she uses photography to confront and narrate significant and profound social issues while encouraging viewers to explore complex themes of race, identity, and American culture.
The exhibition includes a specially commissioned project by Intesa Sanpaolo called "Preach," which serves as a multi-layered installation with deep symbolic meaning. Accompanying the installation is a poem by Weems that reads: "In the flames and among the bombs, pray where and when you can – From your secret hiding place you have discovered new forms of worship." This series explores the fervent forms of worship characteristic of Weems' Black church experience while simultaneously denouncing the violence and oppression inextricably linked to this history. "Preach" blends early images from Harlem, San Diego, and Sea Island with new works that evoke both the transcendental and secular nature of religious expression for Black Americans today.
"My work focuses on describing simply and directly those aspects of American culture in need of deeper illumination," Weems explains. Central to many of her series is the recurring presence of a human figure – an emblematic character that appears to carry meaning beyond reality. This memorable figure provokes thought and remains in viewers' minds long after they've encountered her work. Weems herself notes that she began photographing herself after realizing she could be literally in front of and behind the camera simultaneously.
"I'm both subject and object, performer and director," she states. "I realized that I've been acting/performing/observing in this way for years. This woman can stand in the historical moment and bear witness to the past, the present, and the public/private memories that have shaped our lives as Black people here in America. I discovered that I was the point of reference, and the point of view. Then I realized that this photographic self was a muse and a guide to the unknown."
Weems describes this figure as a performative character: "I call her my muse. She's my alter-ego. But she has a very real function in my work life." The muse made her first appearance in "Kitchen Table" (1990), and as Weems explains, "this woman can stand in for me and for you; she can stand in for the audience; she leads you into history. She is a witness and a guide."
Curator Sarah Meister observes that "Weems placed her subjectivity at the center as an expansive construct. Even when she pointed her camera at family and friends, these encounters were foregrounded as her own relationships and part of a personal narrative. Her family, for instance, becomes the representational vehicle through which she engages in the larger discussion of race, class, and historical migration."
The retrospective also includes significant works such as "Museums" (2006 – ongoing), "Scenes and Takes" (2016), and "Painting the Town" (2021), along with video installations including "The Shape of Things" (2021) and "Leave Now!" (2022). These pieces demonstrate the breadth of Weems' artistic practice, which primarily focuses on photography but also incorporates text, audio, installations, objects, and video.
As an African American artist, Carrie Mae Weems confronts constructions of race and femininity while seeking new models to live by. Based on her unique experience as a Black woman, yet universal in her explorations of family relationships, cultural identity, power structures, and social hierarchy, her work addresses critical social issues. Her background as an anthropologist has led her to investigate folkloric traditions using social science observation methods, as well as appropriating and adapting archival and ethnographic images. Through her photography, she highlights the historical omission of Black women from institutions and art canons, with much of her recent work focusing on power and architecture.
The exhibition is sponsored by the Region of Piedmont and the City of Turin and has been produced in collaboration with the Aperture Foundation. It is accompanied by a catalogue published by Società Allemandi together with Aperture. The Turin museum, which is dedicated to photography and video, is part of Intesa Sanpaolo's Gallerie d'Italia museum project, along with locations in Milan, Naples, and Vicenza. The exhibition runs from April 17 to September 7, 2025, at Gallerie d'Italia Turin, located at Piazza San Carlo 156, Turin, Italy.
