Upcoming Exhibitions
C. Rose Smith: A Silent Rage
On View October 8, 2025 - January 9 , 2026
Opening Reception: Wednesday, October 8, 5:30-7:30 p.m.
C. Rose Smith, Untitled no. 90, Belmont Mansion, Nashville, TN, 2023, Gelatin Silver Print
Serving as a conduit for the oppressed, my self-assertion reimagines and reinserts their existence in spaces where they were once unauthorized. Together, we speak truth to power, reckoning with and redressing a past that looms in the here and now. - C. Rose Smith
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.
ROSE SMITH is a visual artist examining the role of photography in constructing the layers of identity and individuality. Using fashion, site-specificity, and elements gleaned from studio portraiture, their photographs engender a subversive performance that gestures a critique of social norms. Born in Memphis, TN and raised in Atlanta, GA, Smith grew up learning the value of representation and record-keeping of images from watching their father take up the role of both photographer and videographer, and their two grandmothers assist in portrait studios.
Their work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at venues and festivals throughout the U.S. and Europe, including Autograph ABP (London, UK), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, MA), FotoFest Biennial (Houston, TX), Tempe Centre for the Arts (Tempe, AZ), and PhotoBrussels (Brussels, Belgium), among others. Their work is held in the Wedge Collection and various private collections. Smith earned an MFA in Photography from Rochester Institute of Technology and a BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design. They are an Artist Scholar in Residence at Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center, and currently serves as the Assistant Curator of Photography at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, TN. Smith is based in Memphis, TN.
EXHIBITION EVENTS
Opening Reception
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Kniznick Gallery
Register here
Join the Women’s Studies Research Center in celebrating the opening of C. Rose Smith: A Silent Rage. Meet the artist, explore their work, reflect with community members, and enjoy light refreshments.
Cross-Campus Tour with the Rose Art Museum
Wednesday, October 9, 2025
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Kniznick Gallery
Register here
Join us for an inspiring afternoon of art and exploration across Brandeis University! Begin your journey at the Kniznick Gallery with an artist-guided tour of C. Rose Smith: A Silent Rage. The exhibition brings together Smith’s arresting black-and-white photographs taken on location at Southern plantations and Northern textile mills, both sites complicit in the economy of slavery. 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.
From there, we’ll walk together to the Rose Art Museum and discuss highlights from Danielle Mckinney: Tell Me More, an exhibition of sumptuous, meditative paintings that explore Black womanhood, illuminating resilience, beauty, and autonomy. Mckinney offers a bold and transformative vision of leisure, pleasure, and the rhythmic rituals of the everyday, viewed through a female gaze. Attendees will also have the opportunity to view the Rose’s other fall exhibitions, Fred Wilson: Reflections and Fabricated Imaginaries.
C. Rose Smith in Conversation with Dr. Nikki Greene
Wednesday, November 5, 2025
7:00 p.m.
Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall
Register here
Rose Smith will be joined in conversation by Dr. Nikki Greene to discuss A Silent Rage and Smith’s practice at large.
NIKKI GREENE is a tenured professor of Art History at Wellesley College and an advisor to the ICA Boston for the 59th Venice Biennale presenting the work of Simone Leigh for the United States Pavilion in 2022. She has written for numerous art museums, including The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Guggenheim Museum, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery. Her forthcoming book Grime, Glitter, and Glass: The Body and The Sonic in Contemporary Black Art features María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s performances prominently.
Groups interested in arranging a private tour with the artist can contact Olivia Baldwin: obaldwin@brandeis.edu.