Talk

Brooklyn-based artist Hank Willis Thomas’s conceptually-based practice addresses the relationships between identity, media, and popular culture through sculpture, installation, photography, and performance. Often appropriating and recontextualizing common symbols, objects, and brands, Thomas’ work points to the assumptions and biases that frame our experience of public space, others, and ourselves. Coinciding with both the inclusion of Thomas’ sculpture Liberty in Public Art Fund’s group exhibition Image Objects in City Hall Park and his solo show, The Truth is I See You in Downtown Brooklyn’s MetroTech Center, the artist speaks about his repeated engagement with the public and outdoor space.

For The Truth is I See You, speech bubbles of various shapes feature texts in different languages and reveal lines of a poem written by Thomas and collaborator Ryan Alexiev. Accompanying this installation is a pop-up presentation of In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth), a collaboration between the artist, Alexiev, and Jim Ricks of the Cause Collective. This mobile interactive video recording booth has previously been installed in locales such as South Africa, Afghanistan, and Chicago.

Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976, Plainfield, New Jersey) lives and works in New York City. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Ford Lauderdale (2015), the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, South Africa (2014), the International Center for Photography, New York (2013), and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2011). His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Museum of Art and Design, and MoMA PS1, all in New York. In 2011, he participated in the Venice Biennale and the Istanbul Biennial. His work is held in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Brooklyn Museum. He received a BFA in Photography and Africana Studies from New York University in 1998, and in 2004 an MA in Visual Criticism as well as an MFA in Photography, from the California College of the Arts. Thomas is represented by Galerie Anne de Villepoix in Paris, Galerie Henrik Springmann in Düsseldorf, Germany, the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.

Public Art Fund Talks at The New School are organized by the Public Art Fund in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.

This program is made possible in part by Con Edison and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.