Like many of her following works, the project challenged and helped reshape dominant political and cultural narratives. “Along with the social ideas we were studying at UC San Diego, it was a culmination of reading, thinking and looking at what it meant to be Black in America, understanding I didn’t need to look far afield, that I could turn to my family to understand the vernacular,” says Weems.
Decades later, the project remains as relevant as it was then. “‘Family Pictures and Stories’ is only now really beginning to be shown in a very serious way,” she adds. “It’s taken 40 years for people to catch up with the depth of the project.”
Looking for signs
Today, Weems’ family remains central to her work, serving as a means to explore ideas that matter to her. One of her latest projects, a 25-minute video installation titled “Leave, Leave Now!” investigates the story of her paternal grandfather, Frank Weems, blending historical narrative with a call for justice.
A sharecropper in Earle, Arkansas in the 1930s, Frank joined the Southern Tenant Farmer’s Union — one of the South’s first unions open to all races. At a time when sharecroppers and farmers made just 75 cents per day, the goal was to demand better subsidy arrangements from landowners, yet his activism came with significant personal risk.
After barely surviving a brutal assault by a mob in 1936, he made his way on foot to Chicago, where he filed a lawsuit against his assailants. In “Leave, Leave Now!” Weems reflects on the lasting impact of her grandfather’s forced migration — from his physical suffering to emotional trauma and the broken dreams that followed —and calls for retroactive justice. Frank’s story represents many of Weems’ family members who were part of the Great Migration, a time period when millions of Black Americans moved from the rural South to cities in the North and West.
Her video installation is part of “The Heart of the Matter,” a new exhibition that opened in April at the Gallerie d’Italia in Turin, Italy. The show also features photographic works, video projects and sculptures from her 40-year career.
“I have a platform to share certain kinds of ideas,” says Weems. “Showing in major institutions has given me the privilege to widen the field, not just for other artists, but for a public looking for signs of themselves.”