(Seattle, WA; Nov 8, 2023)—The Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington is pleased to present one of the largest exhibitions of works by well-known conceptual artist and activist Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976). Hank Willis Thomas: LOVERULES - From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation will be on view from February 24 through August 4, 2024.
Thomas’s work focuses on themes relating to commodity, identity, media, and popular culture. Experimenting with mixed media and mass-produced imagery, his practice includes photography, sculpture, installation, and large-scale public projects. Originally trained in photography, Thomas employs both archival and contemporary imagery from popular culture to take on urgent questions: What is the role of art in civic life? How do advertising and visual culture create narratives that shape our notion of value in society?
This exhibition of 90 works spans 20 years (2002-22) of Thomas’s practice and is drawn from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation. The exhibition features some of the artist’s most iconic and well-known works, including selections from the series B®anded and Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America, as well as an immersively installed grouping from Unbranded: A Century of White Women. In B®randed, Thomas explores and re-contextualizes the history of brand advertising and sponsorship through the iconography of sport. In Unbranded, the artist digitally removes advertising punchlines and logos. Together, these series highlight the consistently dehumanizing strategies of corporate media, the commodification of identity, and the ways in which dominant cultural tropes shape notions of race and race relations, along with gender and socio-economic presentation.
Other lines of connection appear through the use of historical photography in transmuted forms, repurposed fabrics that give contextual weight to seemingly abstract compositions, and sculptural works that both celebrate and investigate the presence of the Black body in contemporary culture. The exhibition also highlights Thomas’s mining of personal and public archives as well as his ability to reframe texts, images, and materials to connect historical moments of resistance to our lives today.
Recent years have thrown structural inequality into sharp focus. Critical awareness, civic engagement, inclusive collaboration, and empathy—among the core invitations of Thomas’s work—are powerful tools for our times. Thomas’s work guides us to the intersection of art, politics, and social justice. With incisive clarity, Thomas asks us to see and challenge systems of inequality that are woven into the fabric of contemporary life.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication to include essays by curator Shamim M. Momin and collector Jordan D. Schnitzer, as well as installation images and more. The exhibition is intended to travel to other museums after its debut at the Henry.
Learn more about Hank Willis Thomas's upcoming public art project,
Crosstown Traffic (It's So Hard To Get Through To You), commissioned by the Central Puget Sound Transit Authority (Sound Transit) for the East Link Extension at Judkins Park Station,
here.