Isaiah Thomas


Tilton (2026)
Sue (2026)
Letitia (2026)
All that is Bound (2026) 
Gel Medium Transfers

The People Over Data Centers Art Show with Movements4theSoul
Fort Worth, TXA portrait series of prominent Fort Worth community members impacted by industrial encroachment. By transferring photographs onto canvas fabric using matte gel medium, the series foregrounds the faces, places, and lineages inextricably tied to the land and resources industries exploit. In a climate where lives are regularly displaced by private enterprises, this work questions the fracturing and displacement of histories, health, and ecosystems tied to the land. Whose histories are preserved, maintained, and valued? Whose water, air, and land are polluted?


Thank you, Tilton Clark, Letitia Willborn, and Sue Weston



Head (2025)
Inkjet Print
Hands (2025)
Inkjet Print
Feet (2025)
Inkjet Print
“Head Hands Feet” (2025)
Ink-Jet Print Series Head Hands Feet is a self-portrait series made in the tradition of scanning. It was intended for the process to flatten the self into a singular object of labor, the way photography both preserves and kills. The series draws from a perspective of pleading hope toward oneself, one's bloodline, and toward Blackness as an identity brewed out of social death. Referencing Wojnarowicz’s photographs of a dead Peter Hujar, where the head, hands, and feet become a plea for sanctity in catastrophic loss, the series positions portraiture as an act of reverence in the face of inherited exhaustion. Rather than asserting or documenting, the work questions, leaving identity, place, and ancestry open to interpretation, the way Isaiah himself holds conflicting perspectives on each. The result is less a portrait of a person than a still image of an endless weight.



Hyper-Visibility (2025)
Hyper-Visibility
Ink-Jet Print 
New life (2025)
Hyper-Visibility
Ink-Jet Print 
Occupy (2025)
Hyper-Visibility
Ink-Jet Print 
Desire (2025)
Hyper-Visibility
Ink-Jet Print 
Against all odds (2025)
Hyper-Visibility
Ink-Jet Print 
Interiority (2025)
Hyper-Visibility
Ink-Jet Print 
Citizen (After Image) (2025)
Hyper-Visibility
Ink-Jet Print
Hypervisibility (2026)
Ink-Jet Prints Hypervisibility is a series drawn from a reconceptualization of an afterimage of Jeff Wall’s 1996 photo, Citizen. Wall’s photo process fuses photography with storytelling; hence, he uses an atypical composition that creates a sense of uncertainty. Considering how Wall’s photos are crafted images with deliberate composition, lighting, and subject choices, rather than impulsive, casual snapshots (like those of street photography), he intentionally creates ambiguity about the true subject matter. An uncentered composition of a man lying in a park’s grass lawn could depict both an alienation of a body or simply public relaxation. Consisting of 7 photographs, Hypervisibility draws from this intentional ambiguity and focuses on the black body. As a consequence of historical anti-blackness, public perceptions of blackness often fall victim to a pathological view of blackness, stemming from slavery and its aftermath of racism. Blackness is diminished and isolated into this state of irrelevance, or even antagonization, in the facets of social life. In composing black subjects with various stoic public environments, some spacious and some constrained, Hypervisibility aims to reveal these often overlooked perceptions of the black body. In using flash photography, the subjects are highlighted in spaces where social life may be forgotten. In other words, through fusing storytelling and photography, the viewer is left to propose alternative interpretations of the subject, questioning the matter of the subject and their relationship to their environment. The man sitting in the parking garage becomes more than a scene of loitering. The couple in front of the cold architecture of an urban landscape transforms into a new aspect of public life. The ignored is forcibly revealed, or in other words, hypervisible.


Untitled (2025)
Wylie, TX
Photograph
Untitled (2025)
Denton, TX
Photograph
Untitled (2025)
Murphy, TX
Photograph
Untitled (2025)
Wylie, TX
Photograph
Untitled (2025)
Murphy, TX
Photograph
Untitled (2025)
McKinney, TX
Photograph
American Consumerism
Diptych Series
Ink-Jet Print 
2025
American Consumerism (1/9)
Diptych Series
Ink-Jet Print 
2025
American Consumerism (3/9)
Diptych Series
Ink-Jet Print 
2025
American Consumerism (2/9)
Diptych Series
Ink-Jet Print 
2025

A Dollar’s Worth (2025)
Ink-Jet Prints In American culture, identity takes a critical role in establishing the norms that affect individual lives. It is through social constructions that various minority groups have simultaneously faced oppression and sought refuge. Yet, in our modern age, rampant capitalist growth has led to trends of commodification, where identities are compacted into consumer products, prepackaged and marketed directly towards communities. Accordingly, "A Dollar’s Worth" takes two experiences, whose fundamental association often goes overlooked in mass culture, and places them in a contrasting yet coordinated setting. Using a minimalist composition, the diptychs invite the viewer to confront the relationship between the two subjects while leaving room for interpretation. The series is heavily inspired by Roni Horn, whose work aims to create deeply contemplative explorations of gender, androgyny, and nature through side-by-side portraits. Similarly, "A Dollar’s Worth" aspires to concentrate on American consumerism and its adaptation to and influence upon perceptions of identity. Each diptych is a contrast between a human subject and various alterations of consumer products. The products aim to embody cultural ideas of masculinity, patriotism, queerness, and religion through subverting product design and functionality. Each portrait implements a composition that seeks to visualize simple —and perhaps intimate—studies of queer models. In placing product photos beside these portraits, this series visualizes the social acceptance priced goods’ dictation of identity. The portraits provide the viewer with a vague indication of the models’ specific identity, while the products offer assimilation into clearly defined archetypes. Taking from the common saying, "A Dollar’s Worth" aims to show the dollar’s true value to modern social life.


Isaiah Thomas

CONTACT

isathxm@gmaill.com
Instagram

BIO

Isaiah Thomas is a fourth-year student with a dual degree in Sociology and Environment & Sustainability Studies and a minor in Studio Art at Texas Christian University. His research interests include critical theory, black studies, cultural studies, and critical geography. As an artist, Isaiah explores concepts of queer theory and visual studies primarily through photography. This summer, his work examined the relationship between urban spatial/environmental inequalities and critical theory in blackness and culture. 

Dallas, TX
Fort Worth, TX

EDUCATION

Sociology (B.S.), Environmental and Sustainability Studies (B.A.)
Texas Christian University
2027

EXHIBITIONS

2026 (Group Exhibition)
The People Over Data Centers Art Show 
Movements4theSoul - Weston Gardens
Fort Worth, TX
October  10. 2026

2026 (Group Exhibition)
Annual Juried Student Exhibition
Texas Christian University
Fort Worth Contemporary Arts
February 12 - 18, 2026

2025 (Group Exhibition)
Annual Juried Student Exhibition
Texas Christian University
Fort Worth Contemporary Arts
February 13 - 21, 2026 PUBLICATIONS

Pride
eleven40seven 
Spring 2025 Volume 20.2
2025

A Dollar’s Worth
eleven40seven 
Fall 2025 Volume 21.2
2025
 PRESENTATIONS

CAA 115th Annual Conference 
Paper: “Dallas, Black Suburbia, and the Aesthetic Regime: How Black aesthesis persists within archival photography of Dallas’ Black suburban landscape.”
New York City, NY
February 3, 2027

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Symposium
Poster: “Dallas, Black Suburbia, and the Aesthetic Regime: How Black aesthesis persists within archival photography of Dallas’ Black suburban landscape.”
Chapel Hill, NC
July 22, 2026

Texas Christian University – AddRan College of Liberal Arts Student Research and Creativity Symposium
Poster: “ Suburbia and Black & White Psychological Safety: How Social and Physical Environments Produce Different Coping Methodologies Among Race”
Fort Worth, TX
April 13, 2026



















All That is Bound
Head  Hands  Feet
Hyper-Visibility
Summer 2025
American Consumerism