Hank Willis Thomas

Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976) is an American conceptual artist known for his powerful work addressing themes of identity, history, race and popular culture. Through an interdisciplinary practice that spans photography, sculpture, screen-printing, neon, mixed media and installations, Thomas challenges viewers to reconsider the visual language and cultural symbols that shape our understanding of society.

Thomas was born 1976 in Plainfield, New Jersey, to a family entrenched in art, music and creativity. His father is jazz musician and his mother an artist, photographer curate and educator. Thomas earned his BFA in Photography and Africana Studies from New York University in 1998 and later completed an MFA in Photography and Visual Criticism at the California College of the Arts in 2004.

Hank Willis Thomas explores the intersection of race and advertising, critiquing the ways in which African American bodies and identities are commodified and manipulated by media. The artist is particularly interested in the power of images in shaping representation and perception.

His series ‘Branded’ is one of his most well-known works, where he recontextualises icons and symbols from advertising to reveal the underlying racial stereotypes and the commodification of Black bodies. In Scarred Chest (2003), for instance, Thomas alters a Nike advertisement by placing the Nike swoosh as a branded scar on a Black man’s chest, confronting the implications of corporate control and exploitation.

Thomas surveys 50 years of print advertising targeting African Americans in his ‘Unbranded’ series. The artist appropriate images published in prominent African American magazines including Ebony and Jet by stripping them of all text and references to product names and slogans. The result is a study of subliminal messages in advertising and reinforced cultural stereotypes in the composition and posing found in the source materials that span from the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr in 1968 to the election of President Barack Obama in 2008.

Hank Willis Thomas lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He has exhibited widely in New York, Paris, Bilbao, Hong Kong and more. Thomas has also worked on large-scale, collaborative projects, including For Freedoms. Co-founded by Thomas, Eric Gottesman, Michelle Woo and Wyatt Gallery in 2016, For Freedoms is a platform that uses art to encourage civic engagement and foster dialogue around important social issues.