South Africa Righteous Space

2014 - Installation (Installation)

Dimensions variable

Hank Willis Thomas

location: New York, New York
year born: 1976
gender: male
nationality: American
home town: Plainfield, New Jersey

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.


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.


Colors:



Hydroforce
© » KADIST

Liz Cohen

2011

From among a cloud of fake smoke we see a heavily pregnant Cohen wearing a bikini and golden stilettos with lace-up straps wrapped around her legs, grasping onto the frame of a modified car as its loud hydraulic system clumsily moves it up and down...

Untitled (Superman)
© » KADIST

Raymond Pettibon

2005

The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...

Condition Report
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Glenn Ligon

2000

Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...

Subject, Silver, Prism
© » KADIST

Brian Jungen

2011

There are several elements to Subject, Silver, Prism ...

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Condition Report
© » KADIST

Glenn Ligon

2000

Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...

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Elevación [Elevation]
© » KADIST

Ana María Millán

2019

Interested in role-play and videogames, Ana María Millán developed workshops with different communities in order to create characters and scenarios for her animations, often in collaboration with a choreographer...

Evenings of water and dense forest
© » KADIST

Noara Quintana

2019

The series Belle Époque of the Tropics by Noara Quintana has as its background the history of the rubber industrialization in North of Brazil...

Stowe
© » KADIST

James Welling

2006

Welling employs simple materials like crumpled aluminum foil, wrinkled fabric and pastry dough and directly exposes them as photograms, playing with the image in the process of revealing it...

Indiscreet Units (Maldives)
© » KADIST

Harm van den Dorpel

2022

Indiscreet Units by Harm van den Dorpel is a group of more than 266 hue-rotating flags, stored on the Ethereum blockchain and IPFS...

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20
© » KADIST

Chris Wiley

2012

Architectural details become abstracted renderings in Chris Wiley’s inkjet prints 11 and 20 (both 2012)...

Nothing New
© » KADIST

Oded Hirsch

2012

Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel...

La Ligne du Temps
© » KADIST

Valeska Soares

2012

Relying on repetition and repurposed materials, Soares works to interrogate time—its measurement, its passing, and its meaning...

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Black Hands, White Cotton
© » KADIST

Hank Willis Thomas

2014

Shot in black and white and printed on a glittery carborundum surface, Black Hands, White Cotton both confronts and abstracts the subject of its title...

I Am A Man
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Hank Willis Thomas

2013

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...

Intentionally Left Blanc
© » KADIST

Hank Willis Thomas

2012

Intentionally Left Blanc alludes to the technical process of its own (non)production; a procedure known as retro-reflective screen printing in which the image is only fully brought to life through its exposure to flash lighting...

Related artist(s) to: Hank Willis Thomas » Abraham Cruzvillegas, » Claire Fontaine, » William E Jones, » Catherine Opie, » Collier Schorr, » Glenn Ligon, » Harun Farocki, » Jens Hoffmann, » Kirsten Pieroth  
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Foreigners Everywhere (Italian)
© » KADIST

Claire Fontaine

2006

Foreigners Everywhere is a series of neon signs in several different languages...

Condition Report
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Glenn Ligon

2000

Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...

Cathy (bed self-portrait)
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Catherine Opie

1987

Catherine Opie’s candid photograph Cathy (bed Self-portrait) (1987) shows the artist atop a bed wearing a negligee and a dildo; the latter is attached to a whip that she holds in her teeth...

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Lutz Bacher, Sweet Jesus
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KADIST presents Sweet Jesus , an audio work by Lutz Bacher...

‘Love at First Sight’ Inspired This African Art Collection - via The New York Times
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Olusanya Ojikutu, who has origins in Nigeria and education and experience in art, shares treasures of African culture and history....

Yoke
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Diane Simpson

2012

Simpson’s sculptural practice connects architecture, clothing, furniture and the body to explore the functional and sociological roles and the influence of the design and architecture of various cultures and periods in history...

Pedro Reyes Part 2
© » KADIST

Pedro Reyes on Los Mutantes and more...