‘The Heart of the Matter’ brings four decades of Carrie Mae Weems’ uncompromising exploration of power, memory and representation to C/O Berlin.
9 September 2026
Who writes history, whose stories are preserved, and who is allowed to remain visible? These questions sit at the centre of ‘The Heart of the Matter’, a major retrospective of internationally acclaimed American artist Carrie Mae Weems at C/O Berlin. Bringing together more than 100 photographs and videos, the exhibition traces over four decades of a practice that has transformed the possibilities of photographic storytelling.
Moving between the intimate and the institutional, Weems examines how images construct race, femininity, identity, and belonging. Her celebrated Kitchen Table Series (1990) turns domestic space into a stage for love, motherhood, gender and self-determination, while Family Pictures and Stories (1978–84) connects autobiography with broader questions of collective memory.
The exhibition extends into museums, monuments, plantations and sites of faith, asking how spaces carry histories of power and exclusion. Recent works, including Preach (2024), consider Black faith communities through spirituality, solidarity and resistance.
Poetic, political and deeply personal, ‘The Heart of the Matter’ reveals an artist continually challenging how history is pictured, remembered and inherited.
This exhibition is on view at C/O Berlin, Amerika Haus, Berlin until 3 February 2027.
