DEEP HORSE TEXTS invited five artists and their chosen human companions to spend a day with a horse in 2021–22. These artists sought out ranches, trail-rides, barns, and horse rescues where they could ride, brush, feed, or just be alongside horses. Each two-person group was given a pre-loaded camera, and the invitation to do whatever they wanted with this time.
What we, the interlopers of these DEEP HORSE ENCOUNTERS, are given to experience, are the contact sheets from each roll of film. These images function less as documentation than as a reminder that time spent with a horse exists outside of what can be held in an image.
Cindy Baker is a contemporary artist based in Western Canada whose work engages with queer, gender, race, disability, fat, and art discourses. Committed to ethical community engagement and critical social enquiry, Baker’s interdisciplinary research-based practice draws upon twenty-five years working, volunteering, and organizing in the communities of which she is part. She moves fluidly between the arts, humanities, and social sciences, emphasizing the theoretical and conceptual over material concerns. Baker holds an MFA from the University of Lethbridge, where she received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Grant for her research in performance in the absence of the artist’s body. She has exhibited and performed across Canada and internationally. Helping to found important community and advocacy organizations over the course of her career, Baker continues to maintain volunteer leadership roles across her communities.