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:



Untitled
© » KADIST

Martin Kippenberger

1989

Untitled is a work on paper by Martin Kippenberger comprised of several seemingly disparate elements: cut-out images of a group of dancers, a japanese ceramic vase, and a pair of legs, are all combined with gestural, hand-drawn traces and additional elements such as a candy wrapper from a hotel in Monte Carlo and a statistical form from a federal government office in Wiesbaden, Germany...

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
© » KADIST

Glenn Ligon

2000

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

Untitled (San Francisco)
© » KADIST

Edward Kienholz

1984

Untitled (San Francisco) was made in Idaho in 1984 and was facetiously dedicated to Henry Hopkins, the then director of the San Francisco Museum of Art who added “modern” to its name...

I can’t believe we are still protesting
© » KADIST

Wong Wai Yin

2021

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...

Other related works, blended automatically  
» see more

Condition Report
© » KADIST

Glenn Ligon

2000

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

Related works sharing similar palette  
» see more

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...

Growing up Everywhere and Nowhere in “Peter and the Starcatcher”
© » ARTS EQUATOR

Growing up Everywhere and Nowhere in “Peter and the Starcatcher” | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Bernie Ng October 22, 2018 By Teo Xiao Ting (1,300 words, seven-minute read) What does it mean to be a child? Specifically, what does it mean to be growing up, to be young, in this milieu? While set in the sepia of 1885, Peter and the Starcatcher by Pangdemonium asks questions that still resonate now, opening up to an extended session of make-believe to present the origin story of a Boy who detests all “grown-ups.” The story comes dusted in “starstuff,” a coveted substance that literally came from the stars, and has the magic to grant wishes...

Head Box
© » KADIST

Jean-Luc Moulène

2009

Head Box by J ean-Luc Moulène i s not the representation of a space but a real space that remains in the domain of sculpture which the artist develops in parallel with his photographic practice...

Related works from the » 2010's created around » New York, New York  
» see more

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...

Herculine's Profecy
© » KADIST

Juliana Huxtable

2017

Herculine’s Prophecy by Juliana Huxtable features a kneeling demon-figure on what appears to be a screen-print, placed on a wooden table, which has then been photographed and digitally altered to appear like a book cover, with a title and subtitle across the top, and a poem written across the bottom...

Excerpt (Sealed) (Brown)
© » KADIST

Stephen G. Rhodes

2010

For his series of digital collages Excerpt (Sealed)… Rhodes appropriated multiple images from mass media and then sprayed an X on top of their glass and frame...

Other works by: » Hank Willis Thomas  
» see more

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
© » KADIST

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  
» see more

Foreigners Everywhere (Italian)
© » KADIST

Claire Fontaine

2006

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

Condition Report
© » KADIST

Glenn Ligon

2000

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

Video: Catherine Opie on photographing leading British artists
© » ROYAL ACADEMY

Catherine Opie

Video: Catherine Opie on photographing leading British artists | Blog | Royal Academy of Arts Catherine Opie in the RA Collection Gallery Video: Catherine Opie on photographing leading British artists Read more Become a Friend Video: Catherine Opie on photographing leading British artists Published 8 September 2023 Catherine Opie discusses her portraits of David Hockney, Anish Kapoor, Gillian Wearing, Isaac Julien and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, featured in our free display in the Collection Gallery...

Freeway Series
© » KADIST

Catherine Opie

1994

Although best known as a provocateur and portraitist, Opie also photographs landscapes, cityscapes, and architecture...

Related works found in the same semantic group  
» see more

Lutz Bacher, Sweet Jesus
© » KADIST

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

‘Love at First Sight’ Inspired This African Art Collection - via The New York Times
© » LARRY'S LIST

Olusanya Ojikutu, who has origins in Nigeria and education and experience in art, shares treasures of African culture and history....

The Family Business: Illustrious Art-World Fathers and Sons on How Art Has Transformed Their Relationships - via artnet news
© » LARRY'S LIST

Larry and Adam Fields, Marc and Arne Glimcher, and Anton and Evgeny Svyatsky discuss how they engage with art as a family....

Yoke
© » KADIST

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...