Carrie Mae Weems
Painting the Town
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Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
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Address:
Museumstraat 1,
1071 XX Amsterdam
The photographs in her series Painting the Town appear to be abstract compositions. In reality, Carrie Mae Weems (1953) captured the layers of paint used by local authorities during the Black Lives Matter protests to censor anti-racist texts written on boarded-up shopfronts in Portland, Weems’ hometown. Weems asks: what does it mean to be a witness to history?