Hank Willis Thomas’ work is clever, intelligent, and informative. His work consists mainly of appropriated commercial advertising images which he manipulates to explore ideas of race, class and history. By using what he describes as the “ubiquitous language” of commercial media, he is able to draw relationships between modern and post civil-war/Jim Crow era views of (specifically) the black male body and make accessible his commentary. His work in the series B®anded involves images where logos such as the Nike check are branded onto a black male’s head, or the jumping Air Jordan logo is featured with the Cotton tree logo accompanied by their slogan “The fabric of our lives.” Both of these ideas comment on the issues and histories of race in America, specifically concerning the black male. The jumping Air Jordan and Cotton logos not only reference the lives of slaves working on cotton plantations and how cotton really was the fabric of their lives, but for black men and women who live in the US today, as it is a part of our history; part of the “fabric” of American history and culture. The branded Nike check references the branding of slaves to show ownership and modernly comments on the idea that we are what we buy, or that we choose to identify ourselves by the products we purchase, subconsciously branding ourselves.
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