10/06/2026
The Kitchen Table Series is one of Carrie Mae Weems’ most celebrated works. More than 30 years after its debut, its themes remain strikingly relevant.
This fictional domestic melodrama unfurls around a wooden kitchen table where Weems (in the guise of her muse, or alter ego) is joined by lovers, friends, sisters, and daughters - choreographing a vibrant, if unsettled, social life. The images in this series chart the journey of the central couple from intimacy to estrangement.
Eventually, the setting witnesses the protagonist’s evolution: from heartbreak mediated by the women in her world, to motherhood and passing down secrets and knowledge, and, finally, to independent self-actualization, where the central character is alone and empowered - the source of her own amusement, strength, and pleasure.
The Kitchen Table Series affirmed Carrie Mae Weems’ authorial voice, beginning a career-long practice of inscribing her presence through physical, sonic, and symbolic gestures. Texts written by Weems to accompany the photographs focus on the courtship and dissolution of the central romance. The images and texts rarely overlap, amplifying the inconsistencies and reframings intrinsic to storytelling and, ultimately, suggesting the gap between interiority and outward appearance.
Carrie Mae Weems - The Heart of the Matter
On show at FOMU until 23 August
Info & tickets: fomu.be
The Heart of the Matter, curated by Sarah Hermanson Meister, is a project by museum of Intesa Sanpaolo, in collaboration with
Image: Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Man and mirror), 1990; from the Kitchen Table Series; from Carrie Mae Weems: The Heart of the Matter (Aperture, 2025). ©️ Carrie Mae Weems and reproduced courtesy the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin