Hank Willis Thomas
Relevancy:
Using some of the same methods to raise awareness about political issues, Hank Willis Thomas works in similar manner to me, using the power of major branding campaigns as a vehicle to transport your own message. His work comments on commercialism and branding as does mine however his mainly focuses on African American exploitation in the capitalistic state we live in. He realizes the power of advertising and the often unnoticed effects it can have, often negative. Being a successful artist, I look to H. W. Thomas for inspiration. In particular I am examining his methodology in how he creates his work. I am curious as to the success he has had with reaching his audience and how his work has transformed and informed him through his own research and journey. I unfortunately missed H.W. Thomas’ visit to VCU but I am pleased to find another artist working along the same lines as I do. I feel that there is plenty of room for more artists to make political statements and ask tough questions through their work.
About:
Hank Willis Thomas is interested in popular culture, mainly advertising and how it has defined us and shapes peoples aspirations. He addresses branding, race and class differences. He is a photographer but has admitted to feeling limited by the medium. He has explored sculpture, re-contextualization, and manipulation. His work is very personal to him and he has strong political beliefs that he feels he needs to help address through his artwork. He is formally trained photographer from the California College of Arts and studied Visual Studies and African American Studies.
CV:
I have also been researching H.W. Thomas’ artist c.v. If I choose to show in more galleries I feel that many of the same might be interested in my work. A copy can be found on his website and the link below.
Interviews/ Quotes:
“In previous interviews you've stated that you felt you had some limitations in your photography. How has your photography evolved over the last year or 2?” -Rox Fontaine
“I don't really take pictures anymore. My work has become more conceptual - thinking about how images are used rather than capturing them.” – H.W. Thomas
“I think that the irony of the ideal of the black male body is interesting…it is fetishized and adored in advertising but in reality black men are in many ways the most feared and hated bodies of the 21st Century. The majority of this work comes out of the experience of losing my cousin Songha Thomas Willis – he was killed because he was with someone who was wearing a gold chain. It is this idea – that someone could be killed over a tiny commodity. In NYC in the 1980s, people were killed over sneakers and backpacks. Songha was someone who survived DC when it was the murder capital of the country and then came home to Philly and was killed over a commodity. I want to question what makes these commodities so precious that they are worth defining and more importantly taking another person’s life?” – H.W. Thomas
“A lot of your work explores the advertising industry. What intrigues, inspires and infuriates you about the relationships between art and advertising?” – Photo-Eye Magazine
“As a child of the 1980s and the explosion of cable and media culture through the expansion of the NBA, ESPN and MTV — unlike the previous generation maybe even just 10 years older than me — I learned most of the information that I understand about the world through television, magazines and more and more, the internet. This new generation is learning more from the internet than from anything else. I think what society has not totally come to realize is that, not just for nostalgic reasons, popular culture is our culture. When archeologists and historians look at our culture, advertising will be a major factor — far more than it has been in previous discussions or understandings of history and culture, or other cultures. So I'm really intrigued by it, because it says so much about our hopes and dreams at a given moment — all the things we want to believe about ourselves, or all the things we want to believe are possible about the world, are often implied or exploited in advertising. It's like society's desires bared naked, that's what I love about it, but I also realize how much our distorted understanding of history and cultural morays and things like that affect how advertisements are created and how we read them.
I really see advertising as a form of brainwashing because you have to be media literate to some degree to understand it and there's this language built upon it. But in general, especially as globalization has occurred, there are conversations happening all over the world with these transnational corporations like Nike, who are communicating the same or very similar messages to people in China, to people in South America, to people here, which is beginning to make us all think more and more alike. I'm really interested in that and in what ways of thinking are getting lost and forgotten about. So in my work, I've often tried to just help us be more aware of what we're talking about — I focus on African Americans in part because it feels like it's speaking directly to me. I feel like when you look at a demographic, whether it's teens, or women, or whatever, you start to see what specific myths and generalizations are related to how the world "should" see them. But I'm more interested, in some of this newer work, in looking at how other ethnicities are poked fun at or caricatured. And now that African-Americans especially — not necessarily Africans — are more absorbed into the mainstream, who is the Other? Who's now going to be our... entertainment, for lack of a better word — or our servants to improve our lives?” – H.W. Thomas
I really see advertising as a form of brainwashing because you have to be media literate to some degree to understand it and there's this language built upon it. But in general, especially as globalization has occurred, there are conversations happening all over the world with these transnational corporations like Nike, who are communicating the same or very similar messages to people in China, to people in South America, to people here, which is beginning to make us all think more and more alike. I'm really interested in that and in what ways of thinking are getting lost and forgotten about. So in my work, I've often tried to just help us be more aware of what we're talking about — I focus on African Americans in part because it feels like it's speaking directly to me. I feel like when you look at a demographic, whether it's teens, or women, or whatever, you start to see what specific myths and generalizations are related to how the world "should" see them. But I'm more interested, in some of this newer work, in looking at how other ethnicities are poked fun at or caricatured. And now that African-Americans especially — not necessarily Africans — are more absorbed into the mainstream, who is the Other? Who's now going to be our... entertainment, for lack of a better word — or our servants to improve our lives?” – H.W. Thomas
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