Hank Willis Thomas

Brooklyn-based artist Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976, Plainfield, NJ) addresses issues of identity throughout his multidisciplinary practice. Working with photography, sculpture, and text-based interventions, Thomas has mined popular culture, media, and branding to reveal the effect of power structures on the way we interpret the world around us. Recent solo and exhibitions have been presented at the Cleveland Museum of Art (2013); The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2012); Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, (2012); Brooklyn Museum, New York (2010); Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO (2009); The Baltimore Museum of Art, MD (2009); and The Fabric Workshop and Museum Storefront, Philadelphia (2008). His work is held in numerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. His collaborative projects have been featured at the Sundance Film Festival and installed publicly at the Birmingham International Airport, Oakland International Airport, The Oakland Museum of California, and the University of California, San Francisco. 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 California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco. Thomas has acted as a visiting professor at CCA and in the MFA programs at Maryland Institute College of Art and ICP-Bard and has lectured at Yale University, Princeton University, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. He received a new media fellowship through the Tribeca Film Institute and was an artist in residence at John Hopkins University, Baltimore. In 2011, Thomas was a fellow at the W. E. B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University. Thomas is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City and Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg.

(as of 2016)