
Black and Tanned Your Whipped Wind of Change Howled Low Blowing Itself - Ha - Smack into the Middle of Duke Ellington's Orchestra Billie Heard It Too & Cried Strange Fruit Tears
<p>Carrie Mae Weems pairs photography and text to make incisive comments on race, gender, and the politics of representation. This photograph is part of a project that responds to 19th-century photographic representations of African Americans. For the series, Weems overlaid appropriated photographs of Africans and African Americans with etched texts that lament physical and symbolic violence to the black body throughout history. This photograph’s 1863 source image, depicting an escaped slave named Gordon, was titled <em>The Scourged Back</em> and widely circulated by abolitionists as antislavery propaganda. The text folds the history of subjugation under slavery onto the history of jazz, nodding to Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday, and the latter’s song “Strange Fruit,” a haunting requiem to victims of lynching in the American South.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1995
- Dimensions
- Image, diameter, sight: Diam.: 45.7 cm (18 in.); Window mat: 59.7 × 49.4 cm (23 9/16 × 19 1/2 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Carrie Mae Weems
Artist

Photography
Recognized as one of the most influential American artists working today, and for hersocially inspired and engaged oeuvre, the work of Carrie Mae Weems is multifacetedboth in medium and its examination of modern life—from familial relationships topolitical power. Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1953, she initially showed an interest indance, and participated in local dance groups. At the age of 16, she had her first and onlychild, which her mother, aunt, and sister helped raise. Following her graduation fromhigh school, she went on to study with Anna Halprin, a leading figure in postmodern-dance in San Francisco, California. She continued to pursue dance for roughly a year-and-a-half before she began questioning the value of the practice. As a consequence, shemad a rather haphazard decision to move to New York City around her 18th birthday,though she would continue to return to the West Coast, leading to a relatively bicoastallife.
Full artist profile →More
More by Carrie Mae Weems
Cyclorama - The Shape of Things, A Video in 7 Parts
2021 · High-definition video (color, sound)
The Rivington Place Portfolio
2006 · Print
You Became a Whisper a Symbol of a Voyage & by the Sweat of Your Brow You Laboured for Self Family & Other
1995 · Chromogenic print with sand-blasted text on glass
In Your Sing Song Prayer You Asked Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?
1995 · Chromogenic print with sand-blasted text on glass
Restless After the Longest Winter You Marched & Marched & Marched
1995 · Chromogenic print with sand-blasted text on glass
Some Laughed Long & Hard & Loud
1995 · Chromogenic print with sand-blasted text on glass
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Carrie Mae Weems
- Year
- 1995
- Dimensions
- Image, diameter, sight: Diam.: 45.7 cm (18 in.); Window mat: 59.7 × 49.4 cm (23 9/16 × 19 1/2 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1995-123132
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified





