HANK WILLIS THOMAS

Hank Willis Thomas is an American conceptual artist focusing on themes relating to perspective, identity, commodity, media and popular culture. His work often incorporates widely-recognizable icons—many from well-known advertising or branding campaigns—to explore their ability to reinforce generalizations developed around race, gender and ethnicity. Working primarily with photographic materials, Willis Thomas digitally alters his images, inserting or hiding elements that change our understanding of them.

ABOUT THE WORK:

In his series titled Branded, Willis Thomas manipulates photographs of Black models, adding a scarred Nike logo onto different areas of their bodies. The work reflects on the symbols of commodity culture and the impact of violence in African American communities. The use of the branding metaphor, with its uneasy historic associations within African-American history, speaks to the extent to which commercial branding is geared to racial groups and eventually seeks to ingrain itself into the identity of a consumerist society.