Carrie Mae Weems
(American, b. 1953)
Timothy Wilson Spencer, from The Jefferson Suite,1999
Digitally printed photograph on muslin
Collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museum Purchase, Gail Berkus Memorial Fund
Photo courtesy of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art

Carrie Mae Weems: The Jefferson Suite
March 12-June 9, 2002

"I want to make things that are beautiful, seductive, formally challenging and culturally meaningful. I'm also committed
to radical social change. . . . Any form of human injustice moves me deeply. . . the battle against all forms of oppression
keeps me going and keeps me focused."

Throughout her career, artist Carrie Mae Weems has striven to produce art that focuses on notions of truth as seen through the lens, in her words, "of the artist/woman/other." In her installation The Jefferson Suite, one of a trilogy of fabric suites produced by the artist since 1998, Weems explores some of the profound issues and possibilities posed by the dazzling accumulation of evidentiary DNA information from this point of view. Working in tandem with musician James Newton, who has composed an original musical score integral to the installation, Weems has developed a narrative titled "Let the Record Show," which is heard throughout the gallery, providing both background and context for her photographic images.

Weems' installation is composed of multiple digitally produced photographs on semi-transparent muslin banners, each of which represents some "genetic truth," from Charles Darwin's Origin of Species(1859) to Dolly, the first cloned mammal. Provocative, disturbing, yet seductively engaging, Weems' images float in a sea of sound. The viewer becomes part of the piece in the same way that his/her own life is touched by this ever-expanding knowledge of our inner universe.

In this artist-created theater of imagery, the viewer is wrapped in a harmonic space in which to contemplate the resulting human dilemmas created by our knowledge of genetics. Weems challenges, defies, questions, and sometimes rages at the uses to which DNA knowledge is applied, speaking her mind in a direct, forceful way while surrounding the listener in a diaphanous web of visual beauty. Her questions are not easy, and her suppositions invite debate, but her message is clear: The genetic revolution is here, and both the promise and perils will touch nearly every living thing.

Weems describes the piece as "a poetic lament, ranging from the comic to the tragic." As scientists continue to unravel the strands of DNA, of which our human genome is constructed, Weems has woven the threads of this factual information into her installation, which takes its title from recent evidence suggesting that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his slave and mistress, Sally Hemings. The Jefferson Suite is the latest in an ongoing series of exhibitions organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art showcasing the work of artists who are thinking about DNA and all that is coded within it.

Carrie Mae Weems
(American, b. 1953)
Dolly, from The Jefferson Suite,1999
Digitally printed photograph on muslin
Collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museum Purchase, Gail Berkus Memorial Fund
Photo courtesy of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art

Carrie Mae Weems
(American, b. 1953)
Enactment of the Jefferson/Hemings Affair from The Jefferson Suite,1999
Digitally printed photograph on muslin
Collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museum Purchase, Gail Berkus Memorial Fund
Photo courtesy of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art

Carrie Mae Weems
(American, b. 1953)
The Capitol Building, from The Jefferson Suite,1999
Digitally printed photograph on muslin
Collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museum Purchase, Gail Berkus Memorial Fund
Photo courtesy of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art

Carrie Mae Weems
(American, b. 1953)
A (for Adenine), from The Jefferson Suite,1999
Digitally printed photograph on muslin
Collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museum Purchase, Gail Berkus Memorial Fund
Photo courtesy of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art

Carrie Mae Weems
(American, b. 1953)
Gibbon and Child at Play, from The Jefferson Suite,1999
Digitally printed photograph on muslin
Collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museum Purchase, Gail Berkus Memorial Fund
Photo courtesy of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art

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