FUTURE MIDDLE EASTERN ANTIQUE & ART AUCTION, JUNE 2024

Hank Willis Thomas
American, b. 1976

In his wide-ranging conceptual practice, Hank Willis Thomas explores how American society commodifies Black male identity. His works—which span photography, sculpture, textile, installation, and more—often reflect on media representations and social justice. In his photography series “Branded,” the artist digitally added a scarred Nike logo onto pictures of a Black model. For “Unbranded,” he removed texts and logos from advertisements. In “The Writing on the Wall” (2020), Thomas projected incarcerated people’s writings on the façades of criminal justice buildings in Manhattan. Thomas studied at New York University before pursuing a dual MA and MFA in visual criticism and photography at California College of the Arts. He has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, London, Milan, Brussels, São Paulo, Berlin, and Paris, among other cities. His work belongs in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Hong Kong Arts Centre, the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Thomas is also a co-founder of For Freedoms, an organization that promotes civic engagement via large-scale public projects.