In my opinion, the word "impactful" is often overused, but we genuinely "felt" Thomas' work.
This piece is called 14,719 (2018), which is the number of stars on these 16 banners, and is also the number of people shot and killed by someone else in the United States in 2018:
 |
| 14,719 (2018), by Hank Willis Thomas 2019 |
Here is more information on the piece:
Thomas has several series he creates art for. One is called Branded; the curation for this read in part:
For over fifteen years, Thomas has explored what he calls "the most ubiquitous language in the world": advertising. In his Branded series, the artist adapts the visual strategies of marketing campaigns to call attention to the past and present systems of white capitalism that dehumanize Black people as possessions and commodities.
...Thomas throws into sharp relief the association of [Absolute Vodka] with the class privilege of white consumers. Absolut Power reimagines an eighteenth-century abolitionist diagram of the British slave ship Brookes, its hull taking on the distinctive shape of the vodka bottle...
Here is Absolut Power:
 |
| Absolut Power, by Hank Willis Thomas 2003 |
More from the curation of Branded:
Other works suggest connections between slavery and the big business of sports. College athletes generate billions of dollars for universities and corporate sponsors, but are unpaid for their labor. Thomas considers the dilemma African American male athletes face with the promise of a career based on intense physical demands and the specter of "ownership" that teams and brand endorsements might hold over them.
For example, this is Strange Fruit. Its curation reads, "Strange Fruit takes its title from a poem about lynching that was set to music and hauntingly recorded by Billie Holliday in 1939. Here Thomas combines symbols of lynching and sports excellence in a layered consideration of how African Americans continue to be placed on public display. In 2012, he stated that Strange Fruit 'explores the Black body as a spectacle in an age of a multibillion-dollar NCAA industry that's built primarily off of the free labor of descendants of slaves. It's not far-fetched to think that someone in the NBA is related to someone who was lynched.'"
 |
| Strange Fruit, by Hank Willis Thomas 2011 |
Here is the poem Strange Fruit by Abel Meeropol (1939), and sung by Billie Holliday (among others):
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop
--Abel Meeropol
There were many more amazing works by Hank Willis Thomas on display. To see them, please visit his website at https://www.hankwillisthomas.com/.
As Thomas says:
