Carrie Mae Weems

Foreword by Tom Eccles. Text by Thomas Lax, Huey Copeland. Interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

 

In The Shape of Things, Carrie Mae Weems focuses her unflinching gaze at what she describes as the circuslike quality of contemporary American political life. For this work, Weems created a seven-part film projected onto a Cyclorama, where she addresses the turmoil of current events in the United States and the “long march forward.” Drawing on news and TV footage from the civil rights era to today, elements of previous films such as The Madding Crowd (2017) and new film projects that bring us into our tumultuous present, the films in The Shape of Things combine documentary directness with poetic rhythm to create an enveloping experience. The films are narrated by Weems, and the layering of her resonant voice with these images articulates the dangerous mounting resistance to the “browning of America.” As Weems shows in these powerful works, America is irreversibly changed and changing.

 

Published by MW Editions, 2023

(Currently unavailable for purchase from Gladstone) 

 

Cloth cover

6.5 x 9.25 in. / 224 pgs / 100 color

ISBN: 9781735762999