At the Gallerie d'Italia in Turin, Italy, a major retrospective on Carrie Mae Weems

On view at the Gallerie d’Italia in Turin from April 17 to September 7, 2025 is Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter, a major exhibition dedicated to theAmerican artist curated by Sarah Meister - former curator of the photography department at MoMA in New York - in collaboration with Aperture. The exhibition is part of the official program of the second edition of EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival, this year titled Beneath The Surface and curated by Menno Liauw and Salvatore Vitale.

A central figure in contemporary photography, Carrie Mae Weems has been a powerful voice in visual reflection on issues of cultural identity, sexism and class affiliation for decades. This exhibition, conceived as a retrospective, spans the artist’s entire career, with a selection of her most famous works and a new unpublished project specially commissioned by Intesa Sanpaolo. The works selected for this exhibition aim to highlight Carrie Mae Weems’ role in addressing the complexities and injustices of the world around us, rooting her photography in places often excluded from narratives, such as artist’s studios, southern U.S. plantations, domestic spaces, and even the “invisible institutions” that arose as places of worship for the black community during oppressions, juxtaposed with images of monuments and museums that have historically been places of exclusion.

The beating heart of the exhibition is Preach itself, an installation intended to reflect on African American spirituality and religious practices, revealing its dual nature: the series celebrates the deep, passionate and joyful forms of worship that define the Black Weems Church experience, while at the same time denouncing the violence and oppression that are inseparable elements of this history. “In flames and among bombs, you pray where and when you can, in harbors and huts, in buildings and basements, in theaters and clubs. From your secret hiding place you have discovered new forms of worship...,” Weems writes in the new poetic text accompanying the installation. Using herself as muse and guide, Weems invites us to join in this spiritual awakening and condemn the persecution that makes these sacred spaces places of refuge and activism. Preach weaves together early images from Harlem, San Diego, and Sea Island, Georgia, with many new works that evoke the transcendental and secular reality of religious expression for Black Americans today.

Alongside this new production, audiences will be able to find some of Weems’ most celebrated series, such as the historic Kitchen Table Series (1990) and Museums (2006 - ongoing), as well as a selection of more recent projects, such as Scenes and Takes (2016) and Painting the Town (2021), and major video installations including The Shape of Things (2021) and Leave Now! (2022).

The exhibition sees the collaboration of Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, which promotes cultural actions inspired by the values of inclusion and valuing differences as a source of richness. Through urban communication campaigns and the public program #Inside, it aims to engage an increasingly wide and varied audience, in synergy with the spirit of EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival.

To complete the project, a catalog co-edited by Società Editrice Allemandi and Aperture will be published, with texts by scholars of different generations, testifying to the value and strength of an artist who, for decades, has been investigating the contradictions of our present with rigor and poetry.

Notes on the artist

Carrie Mae Weems, a conceptual artist, analyzes and confronts conceptions of race and femininity in search of new models of life. Grounded in the specificity of her experience as a black woman, yet universal in her explorations of family relationships, cultural identity, power structures and social hierarchy, her art practice is primarily photographic, but also incorporates text, textiles, audio, installation and video. Informed by narrative, folkloric traditions and social science observational methodologies, her approach to image-making ranges from the staging and serialization of narrative to the appropriation and adaptation of archival and ethnographic images. Weems targets the complicity of the photographic medium in propagating dehumanizing patterns and the historical omission of black women from institutions and art canons.
Weems lives in Syracuse, New York, with her husband Jeffrey Hoone. She is currently Artist in Residence at Syracuse University.

Exhibition set-up photos by Andrea Guermani

At the Gallerie d'Italia in Turin, Italy, a major retrospective on Carrie Mae Weems

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