Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Contemporary Art

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the notion of diaspora, as a framework to explore the use of movement within the lens-based work of Carrie Mae Weems. This study is largely carried out through Leave! Leave Now! 2022, a twenty-five-minute video installation sectioned into five parts and staged within a traditional movie theatre. The artwork explores the journey, real-life disappearance and reappearance of sharecropper Frank Weems—the artists grandfather—through a diasporic tale interwoven with critical questions about migration and its historical and future consequences. The first chapter “Diasporic Journeys”, explores enforced journeys and the diasporic experiences at large. The second chapter, “Temporal Movement”, explores the use of photographic imagery that moves between the past, and its role in haunting the present. The third chapter “Black Mobility”, explores the freedom to move, shift and redefine how one is seen, through rethinking the act of looking itself as shaped by many power relations. Additionally, an exploration into the formal aspects of the film installation is made by thinking on the use of black and white imagery, the merging of documentary and staged imagery, and highlighting the use of the ‘Peppers’s ghost’, a projection technique which makes figures appear as apparitions or holograms within the theatre installation. As Weems repeatedly depicts archival imagery of anonymous Black families, alongside imagery of bodily violence against Black people, numerous concerns are called into question. Throughout, this dissertation will address the impact of the imaging tools Weems chooses to employ and their efficacy in subverting the photographic apparatus.

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