Lincoln, Lonnie, and Me

Overview

Carrie Mae Weems draws on narrative formats such as self-portraiture, social documentary and oral history to scrutinize notions of subjectivity in terms of gender, race and class. Her video installation Lincoln, Lonnie, and me is a meditation on the exclusionary mechanisms of the American dream. In one sequence, Weems intones a portion of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address while spectres of Lincoln, a crying woman and a reenactment of the John F. Kennedy assassination flit across the screen. In another, segments of speeches by her fellow artist and activist Lonnie Graham alternate with images of race riots and bus boycotts. Between these scenes, Weems intersperses ghostlike appearances of athletes, performers and tricksters, thus commenting on how white culture has traditionally reduced Black identity to certain societally sanctioned roles and provoking viewers to confront their own complicity in the perpetuation of systemic racism. (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco).