The image is borrowed from protests during Civil Rights where African Americans in the south would carry signs with the same message to assert their rights against segregation and racism. Historically, in countries such as the US and South Africa, the term “boy” was used as a pejorative and racist insult towards men of color, slaves in particular, signifying their alleged subservient status as being less than men. In response, Am I Not A Man And A Brother? became a catchphrase used by British and American abolitionists. The question “Am I Not A Man?” was brought up again during the Dred Scott decision of the U. S. Supreme Court in 1857. More recently, “I Am a Man” and also “I Am Not a Man” has been used as a title for books, plays and in film to assert the rights of all people to be treated with dignity, from African Americans to Feminists. Signs were even used in Arabic language translated to Ana Rajul during the Arab Spring. For this painting, the artist was specifically inspired by a particular photograph from the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike, where a large group of black men assembled with protest posters bearing the same message and nearly identical typeface. The artist has also created many other version of this painting that play with the orientation and wording of the text (ie: A Man I Am, I Be a Man, I Am Many, I Am The Man, etc.), reflecting historically on the variations that have been used before, and speculating on how they may continue in the future. Of this series the artist recalls:“I was born in 1976, and I was amazed that just eight years before I was born it was necessary for people to hold up signs affirming their humanity. The phrase that I grew up with was “I am the man,” which is also influenced by African-American culture but takes a very different starting point. What I was interested in was, how many other ways could I read that phrase?… In the U. S. Constitution, blacks were considered three-fifths of a man. Then there was the slogan adopted by the Quakers, “Am I not a man and a brother?” There are a lot of other references, like “Ain’t I a Woman?” is a reference to Sojourner Truth’s famous speech, but also the Women’s Liberation movement. The final painting in the group says “I am. Amen.” The greatest revelation should be that we are.”
Employing the visual language and terminology of mass media, and appropriating symbols and images from popular culture, Hank Willis Thomas’ work seeks to question and subvert established definitions and positions with regards to personal identity and the narrative of race. Working across installation, photography, video, and media work, Thomas maintains his photo conceptualist roots, primarily taking source material from found photographs and archives. These images form the basis from which the artist seeks to uncover the fallacies that history claims as truth. His work illustrates how the way history is represented and consumed reinforces generalizations surrounding identity, gender, race and ethnicity, and that as an artist he has an opportunity to expose or to revise those histories from the points of view of the oppressed.
South Africa Righteous Space by Hank Willis Thomas is concerned with history and identity, with the way race and ‘blackness’ has not only been informed but deliberately shaped and constructed by various forces – first through colonialism and slavery, and more recently through mass media and advertising – and reminds us of the financial and economic stakes that have always been involved in representations of race....
Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...
Gypsy shows an ambivalent scene, in which broken blinds and its unsmiling subject are balanced with the stilllife plentitude of watermelon slices and the beautifully lit nudity of the sitter...
At first glance, Cityscapes (2010) seems to be a collection of panoramic photographs of the city of Istanbul—the kind that are found on postcards in souvenir shops...
Douglas Gordon’s single-channel video The Left Hand Can’t See That The Right Hand is Blind, captures an unfolding scene between two hands in leather gloves—at first seemingly comfortable to be entwined, and later, engaged in a struggle...
Martinez’s sculpture A meditation on the possibility… of romantic love or where you goin’ with that gun in your hand , Bobby Seale and Huey Newton discuss the relationship between expressionism and social reality in Hitler’s painting depicts the legendary Black Panther leaders Huey P...
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
Constructed out of metal or glass to mirror the size of FedEx shipping boxes, and to fit securely inside, Walead Beshty’s FedEx works are then shipped, accruing cracks, chips, scrapes, and bruises along the way to their destination...
Constructed out of metal or glass to mirror the size of FedEx shipping boxes, and to fit securely inside, Walead Beshty’s FedEx works are then shipped, accruing cracks, chips, scrapes, and bruises along the way to their destination...
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
Golia’s Untitled 3 is an installation in which a mechanical device is programmed to shoot clay pigeons that are thrown up in front of a white wall...
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
In this work the artist stages a humorously violent “intervention” against male-dominated cultures of art production in present-day China...
Starting with Bruce Nauman’s iconic artwork, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign) , Mungo Thomson’s neon sign is one of a series that replaces Nauman’s quixotic mini-manifesto with aphorisms from ‘recovery’ culture, especially those made popular by alcoholics anonymous...