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until 31.10. | #5124ARTatBerlin | Barbara Thumm shows from Saturday, 12. September 2026 (Opening: 11.09.) the Solo-exhibition by the artist Carrie Mae Weems.
Over the course of her career, spanning more than four decades, the American artist Carrie Mae Weems has created a complex and multifaceted body of work that encompasses photography, film, installations and other media, whilst engaging with the contemporary social and political issues that continue to shape our world today.
In the ‘Seaside’ series, Weems revisits her now iconic approach to the self-portrait as a witness. Photographed from behind on a single beach, the artist appears lost in quiet reverie as she gazes out towards the ocean horizon. Seated at an easel, she attempts to capture the immeasurable and unfathomable vastness of the Atlantic. As the series progresses – showing her sitting, standing and, finally, unable to grasp the immensity before her – pages from her sketchbook are swept away by gusts of wind, underscoring the limits of representation in the face of stories of displacement and trauma.
“The Law of Diminishing Returns” comprises five oval-framed photographs that evoke, in miniature form, the passage of human bodies across the ocean. Drawing on 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.
Welcome Home, 1978–84; from the series Family Pictures and Stories, © Carrie Mae Weems, reproduced courtesy of the artist, Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin.
The works on view at Galerie Barbara Thumm are in dialogue with The Long Goodbye, a film commissioned for the opening of the V&A East in London (April-October, 2026). In the film, Weems traces how bodies of water, from their sweeping currents to soft tides, have shaped us, enabling transatlantic migration and continuing to impact communities in east London and beyond. The work explores the creation of new identities and artistic forms by the immigrants who have relocated across oceans, both voluntarily and by force.
Weems celebrates the cultural diversity that connects and underpins the foundations of contemporary cities. Transcending fear and adversity, water and networks of migration are the fuel of global creativity.
Weems has held numerous solo and group exhibitions at institutions including Kunstmuseum Basel, Völklinger Hütte, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, LUMA Foundation, Fondazione Prada, Whitney Museum of American Art, Frist Art Museum, among others. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the MacArthur Fellowship and, most recently, the National Medal of Arts in 2024. She was recently commissioned for the Obama Presidential Center and her work is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Tate Modern, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She lives and works in Syracuse, New York.
Opening: Friday, 11. September 2026, 6 – 9 pm.
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 12. September until Saturday, 31. October 2026
To the gallery
Title image caption: Carrie Mae Weems, The Law of Diminishing Returns 4, 2026, silver metallic print, 27.9 × 35.6 cm, courtesy of the artist and Galerie Barbara Thumm.
Exhibition Carrie Mae Weems – Galerie Barbara Thumm | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Ausstellungen Berlin Galerien | ART at Berlin
