HANK WILLIS THOMAS UNBRANDED: REFLECTIONS IN BLACK BY CORPORATE AMERICA

On view April 20–July 30, 2023

OPENING RECEPTION & PANEL

Thursday, April 20 Fifth Floor, 6 p.m. Learn more about works by Thomas during a panel discussion.

See pages 12–13 for details and additional programs related to this exhibition

American artist Hank Willis Thomas investigates race, identity, and class, with a focus on African American imagery and references in advertising, media, and popular culture. His highly collected and exhibited conceptual photographs and digitally-manipulated imagery comments on contemporary race relations and reveals concealed bigotry and prejudices. Thomas’s series Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America, surveys fifty years of print advertising targeting African Americans. Drawn from advertisements published in prominent African American magazines such as Ebony and Jet, the appropriated source materials span from the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, to the election of President Barack Obama in 2008. Thomas strips the advertisements of text and all references to product names and slogans. The resulting images of African Americans in clearly manufactured poses and environments uncover subliminal messages of inequality and reinforce cultural stereotypes often conceived and disseminated through popular culture.

This exhibit features a selection of forty images, drawn from the original series of eighty-two artworks, organized by LSU MOA Curatorial Fellow, Clarke Brown. We would like to thank Alabama art collectors Becky Patterson and Doug McCraw for generously loaning the selection from their complete set.

Thomas lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His art has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in many prestigious private and institutional collections. Thomas recently unveiled his Boston monument The Embrace (pictured left) dedicated to the married Civil Rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King. The