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.
Human Quarry is a large work on paper by Leslie Shows made of a combination of acrylic paint and collage...
Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...
Iron Sorrows (1990) brings together what are for Alexis Smith common motifs and materials such as scavenged and repurposed metal, and street signage...
Black Curl (CMY/Five Magnet: Irvine, California, March 25, 2010, Fujicolor Cyrstal Archive Super Type C, EM No 165-021, 05910) is a visually compelling photogram...
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...
Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...
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...
Her work Al final del arcoiris (At the end of the rainbow, 2015) is a bundle of bills from Chile, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, arranged by color to form a tight spiraling rainbow held close with a rubber band...
Tender reading: A review of Loss Adjustment by Linda Collins | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles January 28, 2021 By Grace Foo (650 words, 3-minute read) Not many people can endure the traumatic experience of losing a child to suicide, let alone be of sound mind to write about it in a painfully self-aware manner...
Press Release: Art21 to Release New Film: “Sarah Sze: Emotional Time” | Art21 Our Series Art in the Twenty-First Century Extended Play New York Close Up Artist to Artist William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible Specials Art21.live An always-on video channel featuring programming hand selected by Art21 Playlists Curated by Art21 staff, with guest contributions from artists, educators, and more Art21 Library Explore over 700 videos from Art21's television and digital series Latest Video 16:41 Add to watchlist Guerrilla Girls in "Bodies of Knowledge" Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 11 June 23, 2023 Search Searching Art21… Welcome to your watchlist Look for the plus icon next to videos throughout the site to add them here...
Architectural details become abstracted renderings in Chris Wiley’s inkjet prints 11 and 20 (both 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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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 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...
Foreigners Everywhere is a series of neon signs in several different languages...
Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...
Although best known as a provocateur and portraitist, Opie also photographs landscapes, cityscapes, and architecture...