Available in a Variety of Sizes and Colors, 1977/2007, from the series Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America, 1968–2008
This work was part of Looking 101, a 2024 exhibition that supported Northwestern University’s undergraduate curriculum with an emphasis on first-year students.The following text was made available in the exhibition via cell phone camera (QR code) and booklet
This work is part of a series in which artist Hank Willis Thomas took advertisements aimed at African American consumers between the years 1968 and 2008 and digitally removed the language identifying the marketed products, assigning them with suggestive titles of his own. Available in a Variety of Sizes and Colors, 1977/2007 features a young African American woman whose legs extend into the foreground. The man on the right directs his gaze toward her legs, shifting his body away from the woman to his immediate right. The central female figure is oblivious to the man staring at her. Another woman lingers over an artwork on the back wall. Her face cannot be seen by the viewer as she attends to her own aesthetic experience. The composition and exchange of gazes in the image offer clues about the original advertisement for pantyhose from 1977.
