0:00:05.876,0:00:10.369
[Carrie Mae Weems: "The Kitchen Table Series"]

0:00:12.284,0:00:14.249
About 1990, I think...

0:00:15.478,0:00:17.476
I had been working away,

0:00:17.710,0:00:19.647
living in this small town,

0:00:23.948,0:00:26.647
and had been really thinking a lot about

0:00:26.647,0:00:28.878
what it meant to...

0:00:31.358,0:00:35.016
what it meant to sort of develop your own voice.

0:00:35.940,0:00:38.941
And so, I made this body of work,

0:00:39.371,0:00:41.015
"The Kitchen Table Series".

0:00:41.879,0:00:44.940
It started in a curious way as a kind of response

0:00:44.940,0:00:47.800
to my own sense of what needed to happen--

0:00:47.800,0:00:49.230
what needed to be.

0:00:49.576,0:00:54.142
And what would not be simply a voice for African American women,

0:00:54.142,0:00:58.447
but what would be a voice, more generally, for women.

0:01:01.603,0:01:03.512
I made them all in my own kitchen--

0:01:03.512,0:01:04.816
all in my own house--

0:01:04.816,0:01:07.480
using a single light source,

0:01:07.480,0:01:09.577
hanging over the kitchen table.

0:01:11.250,0:01:15.639
It just sort of swung open, this door of possibility,

0:01:15.639,0:01:20.012
of what I could actually do in my own environment,

0:01:20.012,0:01:22.416
whenever I chose,

0:01:22.416,0:01:24.278
and which ever way I wanted,

0:01:24.278,0:01:25.951
at this very specific...

0:01:25.951,0:01:30.142
or in this very particular place, spot, and moment in time.

0:01:30.142,0:01:31.108
I love this series.

0:01:31.108,0:01:33.203
This is actually a platinum series.

0:01:37.246,0:01:40.645
I think these ideas about the spaces of domesticity

0:01:40.645,0:01:44.170
that have historically belonged to women--

0:01:44.170,0:01:48.909
and it is the site of the battle around the family,

0:01:48.909,0:01:50.340
the battle around monogamy,

0:01:50.340,0:01:51.707
the battle around polygamy,

0:01:51.707,0:01:54.616
the battle between the sexes--

0:01:54.616,0:01:57.540
it's going to be played out, really, in that space.

0:02:02.476,0:02:06.079
It's this sort of, begging the question of,

0:02:06.079,0:02:10.740
"How do we begin to alter the domestic space--"

0:02:12.414,0:02:14.910
"the social living arrangement,"

0:02:14.910,0:02:16.246
"the social contract--"

0:02:16.246,0:02:18.203
"how does that get changed?"

0:02:22.371,0:02:24.511
What I'm suggesting is that

0:02:24.511,0:02:28.077
the sort of war that gets carried on--

0:02:28.077,0:02:29.878
and I think it is a war--

0:02:29.878,0:02:33.215
how do we manipulate and control one another

0:02:33.215,0:02:35.539
and/or participate with one another

0:02:35.539,0:02:39.171
to sort of share in those possibilities

0:02:39.171,0:02:40.907
in those differences.

0:02:42.571,0:02:45.773
The social dynamics that happens between men and women,

0:02:45.773,0:02:48.173
that women hold the key to the bedroom,

0:02:48.173,0:02:50.141
and the keys to the generations,

0:02:50.141,0:02:53.108
while men, of course, hold the keys to power.