Magenta Colored Girl, Carrie Mae Weems (born 1953)

Carrie Mae Weems’s Magenta Colored Girl was the 2017 KU Common Work of Art to accompany the KU Common Book, Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine. The photograph and book call into question the arbitrary nature of racial ordering and coloring, of identity and identification. The recognition of skin color as a cultural value aligns Magenta Colored Girl with the pursuits of Citizen, as each demonstrate aspects of racism through form and content.