Work by Cedric Smith

Throughout recent history, horses have been symbols of freedom, masculine ability, brawn and bravery. In the context of the grand western landscape they were a means to lay claim to new land and greater fortune. In the South, success on the race track brought prestige and opportunity. Under the ownership of white colonialists, horses were powerful symbols of wealth and status. Both as a signpost for prosperity and as means for transportation, horses became an industry unto its own in early America.

What we know today is that the keeping of these animals relied on generations of Black labor and expertise. The unpaid labor of enslaved people who worked as stable hands, horse trainers, jockeys, and grooms, made the industry possible. But history privileges the writer, and the acumen of the enslaved hardly made it into the history books most of us were taught from. 

Cedric Smith paints the portraits that were never painted at the time. He is not reimagining history, but reinscribing an erasure. The deep reservoirs of knowledge and skill required for equine work are still rarely attributed to the folks who built the equine industry that underpinned all of western civilization. First, our ability to travel, to explore, and to accumulate wealth, and then the privileged thrill of a leisure class that creates games for the sake of furthering status– both required the expertise and effort of African Americans.

Even so, these images are aspirational on the stark backdrop of long inequality. The deeper metaphor here, the hope inherent in the freedom of movement only sharpens its meaning under the revelations of Cedric’s work. Horsepower is about the power to move, the opportunity to compete, the power to lay claim, and the true complexity and reach of Black Identity. 

Cedric Smith was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1970. He resides in Macon, Georgia. He is a self-taught painter and photographer who draws on a wide range of influences and sources, traditional and contemporary, to express his poignant observations of African American life. Much of his work is inspired by an observation from his childhood: the absence and negative portrayals of African Americans in advertising and on the labels of popular brands during that of earlier times. Smith has received extensive critical acclaim for his work both in the U.S. and abroad. His work is in numerous private and public collection.

OPENING DURING SEPTEMBER ARTWALK

September 13th @ 6 PM

Generous funding for this exhibition and related programming is provided by: