Artist of the day: Artist of the day, January 20, 2022: Hank Willis Thomas, an American conceptual artist, sculptor, photographer (#1475)

Thursday, January 20, 2022

Artist of the day, January 20, 2022: Hank Willis Thomas, an American conceptual artist, sculptor, photographer (#1475)

Hank Willis Thomas (1976) is a conceptual artist and sculptor working primarily with themes related to perspective, identity, commodity, media, and popular culture.

Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, and raised in New York, Hank Willis Thomas is a conceptual photographer whose work addresses issues of identity, politics, popular culture, and mass media as they pertain to American race relations. He earned a BFA in photography and Africana studies at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (1998) and a MFA in photography, along with an MA in visual criticism, from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco (2004).

Thomas’s body of work constructs dialogues around the stereotypical images of African Americans that media outlets seek to exploit and profit from in film and television as well as advertisements for alcohol, apparel, food, hair-care products, and cigarettes, among other items. Thomas situates the photographs within their historical context and addresses how these stereotypes have been pervasive in American culture since the antebellum period. Particularly interested in the literal and figural objectification of the African American male body, Thomas’s B®anded series (2006) appropriates advertising copy and superimposes a Nike swoosh logo onto the bodies of black men, recalling the branding of slaves by their owners. The series Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America (2005–08) was a direct response to the B®anded project. Taking mostly magazine ads of African Americans starting in 1968 during the civil rights movement to contemporary times, Thomas digitally stripped the images of all logos and text. In doing so, he allowed for commentary on how the advertising industry commodifies African American identity with even the simplest imagery. Thomas’s photographs draw parallels between the past and present and remind viewers of how dominant cultural tropes continue to shape notions of race and race relations.

His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad including the International Center of Photography, New York; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain; Musée du quai Branly, Paris; Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong, and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Netherlands.

Thomas holds a B.F.A. from New York University, New York, NY (1998) and an M.A./M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2004). He received honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, MD and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, Portland, ME in 2017.

Solo exhibitions of his work have been featured at Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville, AK; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, Philadelphia, PA; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, and the African American Museum, Philadelphia, PA, among others.

In 2019, Thomas unveiled his permanent work "Unity" in Brooklyn, NY. In 2017, “Love Over Rules” permanent neon was unveiled in San Francisco, CA and “All Power to All People” in Opa Locka, FL.

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