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Carrie Mae Weems

A Place for Him, A Place for Her, 1993

Now On View

Description

Maker

Title

A Place for Him, A Place for Her

Year

1993

Medium

Gelatin silver prints with screenprinted texts

Materials/Techniques

Materials

Dimensions

63.5 x 203.2 cm (25 x 80 inches)

Identification

State

from the "Africa Series," numbered on verso #3543

Type

Credit

Mary B. Jackson Fund

Object Number

1997.40

Projects & Publications

Publications

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

It Comes in Many Forms

October 23, 2020 - December 18, 2021

Here Weems’s text positions Africa as the site of the Garden of Eden (jannah), with photographs of the men and women’s entrances of Mali’s Great Mosque of Djenné emphasizing a gendered reading of Afro-Islamic architecture. Originally built in the 1200s from bricks made of clay collected from nearby rivers, the mosque brings together local and foreign aesthetics. Historically frequented by trans-Saharan merchants, the mosque is decorated with West African icons, such as ostrich eggs and phallic-shaped mounds symbolizing fertility and prosperity. Although some scholarly interpretations call for strict gender segregation in mosques, Djenné presents a more nuanced, integrated approach to religious life. Muslim men, women, and children still gather for the building’s annual re-plastering.

African Affinities

January 19 - March 25, 2001

Since the late 1970s, Carrie Mae Weems has presented photographs with text in order to expose stereotypes about race, gender, and class. After producing a body of work in 1992 about the legacy of African culture among the Gullah-speaking people of Georgia and South Carolina, Weems traveled to Africa to learn more about her ancestral land, people, and art.

The photographs in this piece were taken during that African trip and depict the architecture of Djenne, Mali, one of the most beautiful and oldest cities in western Africa. Weems was astounded by the buildings, which she describes as having "male and female space... clearly presented in the structure of the buildings." Seeing these structures inspired Weems's musings on the creation of the first man and woman. She described her thinking as follows:

Myths are stories about the historical past that are believed to be true that tell us how the present world came to be. And as you know, human life began in Africa, so in this installation I play with these ideas. But fortunately, I'm an artist, not an ethnographer, so I blend my own myth with those of other cultures. Every culture has a creation myth and almost all of them begin with the battle between the first woman and man. I'm just playing it up in a different light.

One Voice, Many Visions

February 20 - June 14, 1998

I concentrated on the look and feel of the place. What was deep was the gender specificity of the architecture, particularly in Djenne, Mali... The idea that space is "gendered "--you know, male and female space--knocked me out. It was so clearly presented in the structure of the buildings--beautiful.

Carrie Mae Weems's academic training in both the fine arts and folklore is evident in her work. A Place for Him, A Place for Her comes from a series of photographs with text (a creation myth) inspired by the artist's first trip to West Africa in the early 1990s.

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The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is A Place for Him, A Place for Her with the accession number of 1997.40. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.