Carrie Mae Weems, a photographer who explores gender and racism, headlines the Zum Festival at IMS Paulista

Summary written by the Panorama newsroom from the sources listed below. Facts are attributed to the original publications.

American photographer Carrie Mae Weems, whose career spans more than four decades, is the main attraction of the Zum Festival, held this Saturday (7) and Sunday (8) at IMS Paulista, in São Paulo, with activities on photography and visual culture, Folha reported. Her visit is the result of a partnership between the Instituto Moreira Salles and the Women Photographers International Archive, an American organization that supports women in photography.

Her best-known project is 'Kitchen Table', a series in which the artist herself appears in a small kitchen, the setting repeated in every image, taking on different roles: she puts on lipstick beside a girl, caresses a man's face, appears melancholy next to a husband absorbed in his newspaper. The scene is lit by a lamp reminiscent of those used in police interrogations.

In an interview with the newspaper, Weems explained that she chose the kitchen because she sees the domestic setting as central to people's lives, since that is where much of life is negotiated. She said that, at the time she made the series, there was nothing similar about a Black woman dealing with marriage, friendship and love.

Beyond gender issues, Weems examines photography's role in reinforcing racist discourse. In the series 'From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried', she revisited images of enslaved people made by Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz, who intended to use them to argue for the supposed racial inferiority of Black populations, and added phrases that expose the dehumanization of those portrayed.

In 2022, the artist received the National Medal of Arts, the highest honor given to artists in the US, from Joe Biden, then president. She also works with video, text, fabric and installations, and considers love and social justice the pillars of her work.