Strange Fruit
Artist
Hank Willis Thomas
(American, born 1976)
CultureAmerican
Date2011
MediumDigital c-print
DimensionsOverall, Image: 40 × 20 in. (101.6 × 50.8 cm)
Overall, Frame: 41 × 21 × 2 in. (104.1 × 53.3 × 5.1 cm)
Overall, Frame: 41 × 21 × 2 in. (104.1 × 53.3 × 5.1 cm)
SignedSticker on the verso with the artist's signature and date, 2012, in ink.
PortfolioEdition 5 of 5, with 1 artist proof
Credit LineGift of Meredith and Brother Rutter
Object number2018.26
Not on view
Label TextHank Willis
Thomas American, born 1976
Strange Fruit, 2011
Digital c print (photograph)
“What happens when the visual legacy of American lynching collides with the visual legacy of a slam dunk?” This is the question posed by contemporary artist Hank Willis Thomas in Strange Fruit. Like many of Thomas’s photographs, the work provocatively explores the black male body as a site of violence, spectacle, and commercial profit. By using
the title of Billie Holiday’s 1939 song, Strange
Fruit, Willis draws on the painful memories
of racialized lynching in the United States
to explore the exploitation of Black men in
mainstream culture.
Gift of Meredith and Brother Rutter 2018.26ProvenancePurchased by Meredith and Brother Rutter from Jack Shainman Gallery, March 2012; gifted to the Chrysler Museum of Art, September 2018.Exhibition History"5 Years of Photography: Building the Chrysler Collection," Photography & Focus Galleries, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, June 26 - November 10, 2019.
"American Appetite: Selections from the Chrysler Museum of Art," Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA, February 6 - June 6, 2021.
