The story of Adam and Eve is one that Carrie Mae Weems has incorporated into a variety of works throughout the years. Given her interest in feminism and sexuality, this is not at all surprising since at the very core of the biblical story is a narrative about the destructive power of female temptation. The imagery of the present lot was first seen in a large painted screen made of pigment and embroidery on sateen with Australian lacewood that Weems created in collaboration with the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia in 1993. The embroidery on the screen reads: “She’d always been the apple/Of Adam’s Eye” and “Temptation my ass, desire has its place, and besides, they were both doomed from the start.”
In both the screen and the photograph offered here, the central figure of Eve is shrouded in a cloth that conceals her face. Weems’ engagement with the age-old story attempts to liberate Eve from her history and, as Weems notes, highlight “how both men and women are accomplices in their own downfall, in their own oppression, in their own victimization.”
