?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
HANK WILLIS THOMAS (1976 - ) Negroes to be Sold.
Laser-cut relief on handmade paper, 2009. 622x431 mm; 24 1/2x17 inches. Signed, dated and numbered 16/30 in pencil, lower margin. Printed at the Brandywine Workshop, Philadelphia.
Negroes to Be Sold parallels 18th-century enslaved persons advertisements, specifically one from Charleston, South Carolina, on April 26, 1760. Thomas uses the familiar silhouettes of Shaquille O'Neal and Michael Jackson to portray enslaved bodies, expressing the duality of past and present as well as enslavement and success. The artist raises questions about the history of slavery, and the continued commodification of Black bodies. Other impressions are in the collections of the museums of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Rhode Island School of Design.
