Hank Willis Thomas

Born:
1976
Residence:
New York, New York, USA
Nationality:
American
Trust:
APT New York
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PRESS & PUBLICATIONS

  • Ben Brown Fine Arts, London presents “The Beautiful Game” by Hank Willis Thomas from October 5 through November 24, 2017.

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  • South Africa’s Goodman Gallery announced today that it now represents Yinka Shonibare MBE, Samson Kambalu, Paulo Nazareth, and Grada Kilomba. They join a roster that includes Ghada Amer, Candice Breitz, William Kentridge, and Hank Willis Thomas.

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  • Hank Willis Thomas has long illuminated the histories of racialized labor, Black cultural economies, politically crafted imagery, and their cumulative roads to revolution.

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  • Hank Willis Thomas has long illuminated the histories of racialized labor, Black cultural economies, politically crafted imagery, and their cumulative roads to revolution.

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  • Last month, from February 21-24, the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) held its eight annual edition of deFINE ART, its multi-day event of exhibition openings, talks, lectures, and workshops.

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  • Skarstedt, London, is currently hosting an exhibition, titled 'Double Take', on view through April 22, 2017.

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  • The Savannah College of Art and Design's museum-quality fine art exhibits are a regional jewel.

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  • Nine artists – including Collier Schorr, Roe Ethridge, and Richard Prince – engage and grapple with the complexities of appropriation, representation, and authorship in a new exhibition

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  • The idea of appropriation, of taking images and transforming or re-contextualising them, has proved a powerful tool for artists, allowing them to reveal and challenge social and media narratives around, for example gender, sexuality and race.

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  • In this heated political climate, art for art’s sake feels ever more like an indefensible position—maybe a guilty pleasure. Even within the relative privilege of the art establishment, activist ideals are increasingly surfacing, while political statements made by artists have become de rigeur. The perennial question faced by such artist-activists is whether or not the activities performed in the rarefied world of the art exhibition and symposium can truly make an impact in the so-called “real world.” To investigate this question, we take a look at recent activist actions by international artists and current exhibitions that aim to effect material change in the world.

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  • In the Jorge Luis Borges story from 1945, “The Aleph,” we are told of a sphere, secreted in a dark cellar, in which all the spatial infinitude and plenitude of the world can be seen simultaneously, from every imaginable angle.

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  • From Generation to Generation: Inherited Memory and Contemporary Art at the Contemporary Jewish Museum explores Marianne Hirsch’s work on “postmemory,” which posits that even without direct experience, we identify so strongly with some historic events and ancestral stories that we take them as our own.

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  • Today, a controversial billboard created by the artist-run super PAC For Freedoms is being installed inside MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens. The billboard, which measures a sprawling 36 by 10.5 feet, will be officially on view as of this coming Friday, and marks the beginning of an artist residency at PS1 for the artist-run initiative For Freedoms that will last through the first 100 days of the Trump administration.

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  • From color field paintings inspired by data sets about African American life to paintings that draw from pop culture and Mexican identity, here are ni

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  • This week it was all about public installations for Art21 artists. Jenny Holzer’s text piece for the New York City AIDS memorial officially opened to the public.

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  • A show that switches up day and night. Another that features paintings inspired by a lost paradise. And objects that fuse different currents in Americ

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  • What the most spectacular shows of 2016 haven’t done is hide from the truth: art is a flimsy refuge, and it cannot shelter us from the fragility and instability in our changing world. The events of 2016 may have altered the course of our future, but looking back over the stand-out exhibitions at the world’s top galleries and institutions this year, they all share one thing: defiance.

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  • Public Art Fund has announced the appointment of artist Hank Willis Thomas to its board of directors.

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  • Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, presents the exhibition “Africans in America” through December 17, 2016.

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  • “Question Bridge: Black Males” features black American males asking and answering questions about being a black man in the United States. “Question Bridge” isn’t just about black American men, artist Hank Willis Thomas says. “It’s about people and how they relate when they are put into categories and boxes that are dehumanizing.” Courtesy of “Question Bridge: Black Males” and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

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  • The Oakland Museum of California's (OMCA) new exhibition, All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50, opened on October 8 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party's founding in Oakland and continues OMCA’s commitment to examining topics and themes that are socially relevant and meaningful to the community through exhibitions, programs, and partnerships.

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  • As part of a series called Black Portraiture[s], American Artist Hank Willis Thomas, Ashely Whitfield as well as Bianca Mona, Arts Administrator and Advocate, discuss the representation of Africa and African-ness in the Eddie Murphy classic – ‘Coming to America’. Black Portraiture[s] takes place this week as part of the Goodman Gallery’s 50th Anniversary.

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  • In Context,’ is an ongoing programme of exhibitions, lectures, and artistic interventions in Johannesburg, we speak to Hank Willis Thomas about relevancy of the exhibition, within the context of the newfound international interest in African art. As well as get his opinion on the differences between race identity in South Africa versus the United States, and his transition from artist to curator.

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  • Anniversaries are by definition meant to shine a light on the past, but during a three-day art conference in Johannesburg it was the present and future that became illuminated. “Black Portraiture[s] III: Reinventions: Strains of Histories and Cultures” was held from Nov. 17-19 amid the 20th anniversary of the signing of South Africa’s post-apartheid progressive constitution; the 40th anniversary of the anti-apartheid Soweto uprisings; and the 50th anniversary of a leading African art institution, Goodman Gallery.

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  • In an online talk, Africans in America co-curator Hank Willis Thomas describes a friend’s experience atop a camel in southern Egypt. A young Egyptian, recognising Hank’s friend as African-American asks the friend for “the latest Tupac CD”. More interesting than the encounter is Thomas’s summation of the experience, saying: “It’s niggas in America fucking it up for black people everywhere.”

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  • A collaborative project between New York University, Harvard University, Wits University and the Goodman Gallery, Black Portraiture[s] III started at Turbine Hall in Johannesburg on Thursday morning.

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  • A collaborative project between New York University, Harvard University, Wits University and the Goodman Gallery, Black Portraiture[s] III started at Turbine Hall in Johannesburg on Thursday morning.

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  • When was the last time you heard boisterous applause or impromptu song led by artists at the opening of an art conference? The protocols at these international talk shops tend to drain any conviviality from proceedings. After declaring their ambitions from carefully raked notes, organizers cede the microphone to on-message sponsors and cultural mandarins whose theme-specific keynotes will gird the bibliographies of future graduate theses.

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  • Hank Willis Thomas Opens a 'Black Righteous Space' at the California African American Museum

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  • Copyright denier Richard Prince lands back in court. Photographer Eric McNatt is the current litigant; he filed suit against the artist and gallery Blum & Poe in Manhattan federal court on November 16.

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BIOGRAPHY

Hank Willis Thomas received his BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and his MFA in photography—along with an MA in visual criticism—from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. His work was featured in the exhibition and accompanying catalog, 25 under 25: Up-and-Coming American. He has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the U.S. and abroad, including the Studio Museum in Harlem; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut; Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Jamaica, New York; Artists Space, New York; Leica Gallery, New York; Texas Woman’s University; Oakland Museum of California; Smithsonian; Anacostia Museum, Washington, D.C.; Bronfman Center for Jewish Life at NYU; National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.; and National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. Among othere. His work is currently on view in group shows at The High Museum, Atlanta and Museum of Fine Art, Houston. His next solo show will open at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, February 2009.


For additional information about this artist, visit Mutual Art