"I started thinking about logos as our generation’s hieroglyphs. They can be embedded with so much meaning, and I really wanted to play off that."
—Hank Willis Thomas
In his Branded series, Hank Willis Thomas utilizes the visual language of advertising to interrogate how brands have exploited Black American culture to sell products, and frequently upheld racist stereotypes in the process. Evidenced in An Unidentified Jamaican Boy Uses the Puma H Street Running Shoe to Run for his Freedom, by appropriating commercial imagery Thomas ruminates on how corporations render Black male identities as inherently tied to athleticism – and as such, the deeply troubling history of linking Black male bodies to strenuous labor.