“Reflections of Now,” a serious exhibition of labor by internationally renowned artist Carrie Mae Weems H’17, Syracuse University’s first-ever artist in residence, opened June 22 on the Barbican Art Gallery in London. Weems’ first major solo U.K. exhibition will run through Sept. 3.

Widely considered to be one of the crucial influential American artists working today, Weems is well known for her exploration of identity, power, desire and social justice through work that challenges representations of race, gender and sophistication. Through her intimate and thought-provoking images, Weems challenges societal norms, reclaims narratives and encourages views to critically examine their very own assumptions and biases.

This presentation of Weems’ multidisciplinary work captures the performative and cinematic nature of her practice through photographs, movies and installations, from the long-lasting “Kitchen Table Series” (1990) to “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried” (1995-96), focused on systemic racism, to the incisive film installation “The Shape of Things” (2021), calling out the “pageantry” of latest American politics.

The Evening Standard calls the exhibition “breathtaking” and “a transcendent show from an artist who has delivered for 30 years.”

“My responsibility as an artist is to work, to sing for my supper, to make art, beautiful and powerful, that adds and divulges, to beautify the mess of a messy world,” Weems told Dazed. The exhibition’s co-curator, Raúl Muñoz de la Vega, added, “Beauty and elegance is a key formal aspect of claiming her work. In an effort to lure you to enter a really difficult conversation, she does it with the trick of beauty.”

The exhibition is accompanied by “Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now,” the primary publication dedicated to her writings. It’ll highlight Weems’ influence as an mental, reflecting the twin nature of her profession as an artist and an activist.

2023 has been a busy 12 months for Weems. She was the guest of honor on the twelfth Annual Brooklyn Artists Ball, presented by Dior, on April 25 on the Brooklyn Museum. She was honored for her “innumerable contributions as each a trailblazing artist and a community-focused activist.” An exhibition featuring “The Shape of Things” opened on the Luma in Arles, France, in May.

Together, with the Barbican exhibition, “Perhaps we’ll finally get the message on this side of the pond, too, that Carrie Mae Weems deserves our fullest attention,” wrote Caroline Roux within the Financial Times.

On Aug. 15, a video presentation and talk with Weems on her work “Leave, Leave Now” will probably be held on the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts (Martha’s Vineyard). The event is presented by the University’s Office of Multicultural Advancement and the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard.

Earlier this 12 months, Weems was named a 2023 Hasselblad Award laureate by the Hasselblad Foundation, a prize that’s sometimes called the Nobel Prize of photography. An award ceremony will happen on Oct. 13 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

A MacArthur Fellowship (a.k.a. “Genius Grant”) recipient and the primary African American woman to have a retrospective on the Guggenheim Museum, Weems has used multiple mediums (photography, video, digital imagery, text, fabric and more) throughout her profession to look at themes of cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems, family relationships and the implications of power.

Weems has created a fancy body of labor that centers on her overarching commitment to helping us higher understand our present moment by examining our collective past. Determined as ever to enter the image—each literally and metaphorically—Weems has sustained an ongoing dialogue inside contemporary discourse for over 35 years.

As artist in residence at Syracuse University, Weems engages with faculty and students in numerous ways, including working with students within the design, planning and preparation of exhibitions. The artist in residence program is overseen by the Office of Academic Affairs.

Weems first got here to Syracuse in 1988 to take part in Light Work’s artist-in-residence program. Over time, she has participated in several programs at Light Work and has an extended history of engaging with students and the University community.

She has received quite a few awards, grants and fellowships, including the MacArthur Fellowship, U.S. Department of State’s Medal of Arts, Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Rome, National Endowment of the Arts fellowship and Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, amongst many others.

Weems is represented in private and non-private collections world wide, including the Brooklyn Museum; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Museum of High-quality Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, Recent York; Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Weems has been represented by Jack Shainman Gallery since 2008.