Hank Willis Thomas is a US artist who works across media to explore themes including identity, popular culture and mass media. We meet him at his exhibition of collages, ‘Kinship of the Soul’, at London’s Pace Gallery. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hello and welcome to Monocle on Culture with me, Robert Bound.
On today's show, I'm speaking to the American artist Hank Willis Thomas, one of the most respected and tuned in of a crop of contemporary artists working across multiple media to ask big questions about where we are, who we are, how we got here and where we're going.
Oh, yes, big themes.
Willis Thomas subjects are tackled conceptually in sculpture, photography, screen printing, video and installation.
And it's plain to see that he's obsessed with imagery from history, from news media, from folklore, art history, and also image making from the commercial sphere too.
Are we being sold a story?
Are we being sold a history?
Willis Thomas is an expert in the subtle study of the semiotics of our image drenched culture.
I spoke to Hank Willis Thomas before the opening of his new show at the Pace Gallery in London.
It's titled Kinship of the Soul, a title borrowed from the novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer.
And it's a line that plays with the idea of the dots that connect us all.
A few of the works are sculptural figures that might be grasping for the sky or maybe flying or falling.
But more of the works are retro reflective collages made of scenes lifted from protests across across the world from last century.
And this one that call to mind Henri Matisse's cutouts.
The works also reference the artist Romeo Bearden and Aaron Douglas, who work with the realities of race, segregation and the cultural sweet spot known as the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s African American cultural revival.
There is perhaps an idea in this show of hidden stories and overlooked histories.
And so making these images from this retroreflective material, similar to the stuff on a road sign that really pops under your car headlights.
We walked at one speed around the gallery and then with a torch in hand, all was illuminated a second time.
As you'll hear later on Hidden Depths and then some, you'll hear Hank and I discussing the works.
And then as well, wishers poured in from the cold London evening.