Apr 04, 2024 - Sale 2664

Sale 2664 - Lot 218

Price Realized: $ 10,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
HANK WILLIS THOMAS (1976 - )
The Chase Mastercard.

Digital c-print, 2019. 736x1117 mm; 29x44 inches. Edition 1 of 5, with 1 AP. With the Jack Shainman Gallery label on the frame back.

Illustrated: Committed to Memory: The Art of the Slave Ship Icon, Cheryl Finley, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, p. 190, another impression.

Pairing marketing and historical imagery, Hank Willis Thomas delivers a searing critique of American capitalism and questions how the nation drew its wealth. Here Thomas repurposes the imagery of the Escaped Slave Gordon Carte de Visite, known as Nelson O Heppamy, a 1790-91 English diagram of a slave ship from the Atlantic slave trade, and images from the broadside prints of iron masks, collar, leg shackles and spurs used to restrict slaves created by Samuel Wood in 1807. With this historical montage, Thomas presents the foundations of American commerce and its inextricable links to slavery.

Consigned to support the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation.