Carrie Mae Weems, a seminal figure in contemporary art, creates poignant and incisive photographs and videos that confront themes of race, gender, class, and family. Deeply rooted in African American history, her work blends activism with artistry, often drawing on the past to illuminate the complexities of the present. Weems also works across poetry, performance, and installation, expanding her practice beyond the photographic frame. She gained widespread acclaim in the early 1990s with her iconic Kitchen Table Series—a suite of intimate black-and-white images that challenge stereotypes of Black womanhood by depicting the artist in staged domestic scenes, alone or in conversation with others. Over the decades, Weems has received numerous prestigious accolades, including the Prix de Rome, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the MacArthur “Genius Grant.” In 2014, she became the first Black woman to present a retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Today, her work is held in major museum collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.