Carrie Mae Weems Kitchen Table Series Meaning

Mother lover intellectual african american woman and friend.

Carrie mae weems kitchen table series meaning. The intimate and often political content of this narrative series finds common ground around the kitchen table transcending the separation of domestic and civic space. The book features for the first time all 20 photographs and 14 text panels from kitchen table series one of the artist s earliest series and includes essay contributions by sarah lewis and adrienne edwards. Though the entirety of the kitchen table series is in the permanent collections of the cleveland museum of art and the detroit institute of arts it is most often seen in parts through individual scenes and rarely with its accompanying text. Endowed with a keen sense of how to transform her body into an expressive tool weems used the photographs to tell the story of a woman s life as seen through the intimate space of the kitchen the traditional sphere of women and a site of sanctuary creation shared.

The kitchen is a place to be burned but it is a space to be healed as well. The kitchen table series first shown in 1990 brought carrie mae weems to the forefront of the contemporary art lexicon with its unflinching intentionally crafted depictions of its protagonist s many social roles. In this image from the kitchen table series carrie mae weems gives viewers the privilege to witness this remarkable ordinary extraordinary ritual. In this series weem centers the kitchen as a space straddling the domestic and public sphere and calls into question the social roles associated with the kitchen table.

Kitchen table series is a special volume dedicated to carrie mae weems s celebrated body of work made in 1990. Considered to be one of the artist s most important bodies of work carrie mae weems kitchen table series interweaves themes of race class gender friendship love loss power and motherhood. Weems suggests that the familiar unremarkable domestic kitchen is actually important as an epicenter of family life and human drama. Carrie mae weems reflects on her seminal kitchen table series decades after she photographed it just in time for its first stand alone book release.

Playing that everywoman we all have been at one time or another the photographer herself sits in a black slip cigarette just a dangling head cocked to the side seeking solace against the belly of a kitchen beautician.