Carrie Mae Weems at the Barbican review: a transcendent show from an artist who has delivered for 30 years

The American artist’s first major UK museum show is breathtaking

A neat trick opens Carrie Mae Weems’s first major UK museum show. It begins in the upper mezzanine. And climbing the stairs, you see what appear to be abstract paintings. These surveys often start with the artist’s earliest work; “I hadn’t realised that she began as a painter,” I thought. Except she hadn’t.

These aren’t early works, they’re from 2021. Neither are they paintings; they’re photographs, the medium that Weems has used with tremendous flair and power over more than 30 years. And they’re very definitely not abstract.

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