The Shape of Things

2021

This spectacular, cylindrical installation acts as a collage of Weems’ visual archive over the previous decade, editing together newly shot and found footage from moments of protest, action, and resistance to white supremacy as well as lingering, loving imagery that evokes Black joy. Weems’ power as an orator is highlighted in the narration, which anchors the many chapters of this forty-minute-long video work.

Amidst the political landscape of the Trump presidency and the uprisings of 2020, Weems converted her unease into an extended meditation on anti-Black violence and Black resilience across time and space. The beauty of the human face, the human body, and their movement on high-definition film is presented through a lens of Blackness that both celebrates and mourns the current state of “things.” As in her entire body of work created through the decades, Weems’ The Shape of Things (2021) offers a critique-in-the-round made more potent by moments of intense and overwhelming visual pleasure.