Copied
Carrie Mae Weems, Suspended Belief, from the series Constructing History, 2008, archival pigment print, 60 7⁄8 × 50 7⁄8 in. (154.6 × 129.2 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2022.48.5, © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Copied
Artwork Details
- Title
- Suspended Belief, from the series Constructing History
- Artist
- Date
- 2008
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 60 7⁄8 × 50 7⁄8 in. (154.6 × 129.2 cm)
- Copyright
- © Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment
- Mediums Description
- archival pigment print
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Figure group
- History
- Object Number
- 2022.48.5
Artwork Description
The photographs are constructions, literally and metaphorically. The ever-present mechanism of their staging speaks to the constructed nature of all photographs, reminding viewers that seemingly neutral elements such as lighting and framing are, in fact, never neutral. In several, Weems and her students restaged iconic images from the canon of photojournalism, recalling the image-saturated news coverage of events like the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
They also used compositional tropes from Western art history. For instance, Mourning, a restaging of Moneta Sleet Jr.'s photograph of Coretta Scott King and Bernice King at Martin Luther King's funeral, was staged as a Pietà, in Christian art a representation of the Virgin Mary holding the body of her deceased son. Images of traumatic events like Sleet's may wound viewers at first, but their impact is blunted by time and repetition. Weems's reenactments reopen the wounds of history. They do so as a means of processing, reflecting, and laying those wounds to rest. They enact a kind of reconciliation, with and through images.
Exhibitions
September 22, 2023–July 7, 2024
This focused exhibition pairs two projects by Carrie Mae Weems—a major multimedia installation and a series of photographs—that revisit moments from history.