A Place to Call Home

2014 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Hank Willis Thomas

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

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:



Other related works, blended automatically

South Africa Righteous Space
© » KADIST

Hank Willis Thomas

2014

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....

Condition Report
© » KADIST

Glenn Ligon

2000

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

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...

Canton Novelty
© » KADIST

Fang Lu

2016

Canton Novelty by Fang Lu captures the adventure of a group of three girls, Ruohan, Lily and Zoe on a summer vacation in Guangzhou, China...

I used to eat lemon meringue pie till I overloaded on my pancreas with sugar and passed out; It seemed to be a natural response to a society of abundance
© » KADIST

Daniel Joseph Martinez

1978

For I use to eat lemon meringue pie till I overloaded on my pancreas with sugar and passed out; It seemed to be a natural response to a society of abundance (1978), also known as the Bodybuilder series, Martinez asked male bodybuilding competitors to pose in whatever position felt “most natural.” They are obviously trained in presenting their ambitiously carved physiques, but their facial expressions seem comparatively unstudied...

Blind Spencer (Mirror)
© » KADIST

Douglas Gordon

2002

Blind Spencer is part of the series “Blind Stars” including hundreds of works in which the artist cut out the eyes of Hollywood stars, in a symbolically violent manner...

!Women Art Revolution
© » KADIST

Lynn Hershman Leeson

2010

Hershman Leeson’s documentary, Women Art Revolution (W...

603 Football Field
© » KADIST

Qing Zhang

2006

603 Football Field presents a soccer game played inside a small student apartment in Shanghai...

The Tower of Babel: The Carnaval
© » KADIST

Du Zhenjun

2010

The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...

Why fear the future?
© » KADIST

Carlos Amorales

2005

Produced on the occasion of an exhibition at ARTIUM of Alava, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art, this deck of cards is a selection of images from Carlos Amorales’s Liquid Archive...

Office Work
© » KADIST

Walead Beshty

2018

Office Work by Walead Beshty consists of a partially deconstructed desktop monitor screen, cleanly speared through its center onto a metal pole...

Oakland Girls
© » KADIST

Pascal Shirley

2006

Like many of Pascal Shirley’s photographs, Oakland Girls aestheticizes a dingy rooftop and a cloudy sky...

Tania Libre
© » KADIST

Lynn Hershman Leeson

2016

Tania Libre is a film by Lynn Hershman Leeson centered around renowned artist Tania Bruguera and her experience as a political artist and activist under the repressive government of her native Cuba...

Cinema
© » KADIST

Fang Lu

2013

In the work Cinema , Fang Lu explores in a meticulous yet un-dramatic — almost casual — way of how “the self” in our today’s life is a controlled and staged construction of oneself...

The Tower of Babel: Destruction
© » KADIST

Du Zhenjun

2010

The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...

8 Ball Surfboard
© » KADIST

Alexis Smith

1995

In 8 Ball Surfboard (1995),Alexis Smith combines her long-term interests in California culture and conceptual assemblage...