C. Rose Smith: A Silent Rage

Rose Smith: A Silent Rage brings together black-and-white photographs taken on location at Southern plantations and Northern textile mills. By inhabiting the preserved living spaces of enslavers, Smith inserts their body in scenes dominated by whiteness and predatory industry. As both maker and subject, Smith reclaims and memorializes the formerly enslaved. Surveying the plantation grounds from an upper open window, seated at the head of an otherwise empty dining table set for eight, and nearly hidden among a gnarled tree, Smith critiques and subverts notions of coloniality.

Central within this series is the starched white cotton dress shirt, a “potent symbol of power and masculinity, assimilation and oppression,” and a metaphor for how “the Black body was commodified alongside cotton.” The shirt appears throughout the photographs, worn by Smith and twice draped across their arm and lap. Smith pairs precise postures and hand gestures with alterations to the dress shirt, like an upturned collar, challenging the false dichotomy between masculine and feminine expression