Carrie Mae Weems | London 2026

A defining voice in contemporary art, Weems has illuminated histories, communities and narratives too often overlooked. Her practice moves fluidly between aesthetic innovation and political inquiry, positioning the artist as both a witness and a participant in the unfolding of history. Weems has a long-standing presence within London’s institutional landscape. Her major survey Reflections for Now was presented at the Barbican Art Centre in 2023, following earlier exhibitions at Café Gallery Projects curated by Dr Mark Sealy in 2005. Her debut with Goodman Gallery London marks a significant new chapter in her sustained engagement with the city. This new exhibition premieres recent and iconic bodies of work responding to themes of migration, identity and belonging.

The Law of Diminishing Returns comprises five oval-framed photographs that render, in miniature form, the passage of human bodies across the ocean. Evoking early photographic portraiture through their intimate scale, the works meditate on the enormity of global migration – from the transatlantic slave trade to contemporary economic displacement. Their modest dimensions demand close viewing, inviting contemplation and bearing witness to movements of profound historical consequence.

A corresponding group of seven oval-framed works titled Ocean Line isolates the horizon in a deep blue hue. Weems is renowned for her use of colour tints to inflect photographic imagery with emotional and political resonance, often addressing race, systemic violence and memory. Here, the saturated blue oscillates between contemplation and corporeality – at once expansive and bruised – transforming the horizon into a charged site of reflection.

Among the central works in the exhibition is Seaside, a five-panel photographic work in which Weems reprises her iconic strategy of self-portraiture as witness. Photographed from behind on a shingle beach, the artist appears in moments of quiet reverie facing the ocean’s horizon. Seated at an easel, she attempts to render the vast and unknowable scale of the Atlantic passage. Across the sequence – seated, standing, and ultimately unable to contain the immensity before her – pages from her sketchbook are caught by gusts of wind, underscoring the limits of representation when confronted with histories of displacement and trauma.

The exhibition also presents selections from the acclaimed series Painting the Town. In these works, Weems photographs boarded-up storefronts following the civic unrest after the murder of George Floyd. Nearly life-sized in scale, the images function as trompe l’oeil abstractions: painted plywood surfaces appear at first glance to be gestural abstract paintings. By framing these “found” compositions, Weems reveals how attempts to conceal protest and dissent produced unintended visual languages, where acts of censorship become accidental abstractions.