Artist: Hank Willis Thomas

Jack Shainman Gallery presents I AM MANY, an exhibition featuring new and recent work by Hank Willis Thomas, the artist’s eighth exhibition with the gallery and first in their newly opened Tribeca flagship location. Bringing together large-scale sculptures, retroreflective, lenticular and textile works along with a group of mixed-media assemblages, I AM MANY continues Thomas’ investigation into the myriad of ways that the past and present remain interwoven and interconnected. These works explore the legacies of exploitation and oppression in conjunction with new forms of community and solidarity.

Over the past two decades Thomas’ conceptual practice has employed a wide range of media, from photography and sculpture, to screen printing, installation and video. Drawing from both archival and contemporary imagery that references historical examples of political resistance through iconic photographs or contemporary acts of protest, Thomas regularly recontextualizes popular imagery as source material for his works. What unites Thomas’ work across media is his emphasis on the multivalent nature of historical meaning—as something that can always be reshaped and seen from different perspectives.

The exhibition takes its title from an eponymous work that references photographs from the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike which saw Black men assembled with posters all bearing the same message of ‘I AM A MAN’ and in nearly identical typeface. Thomas has transformed that historic message by creating new iterations that expand out from the original phrase, with retroreflective vinyl that, once activated by direct light, reveals latent, previously hidden images of historic protests. Removed and repositioned from their original context, the crowds underscore the enduring power conveyed by the written word.

Thomas also uses retroreflective vinyl to staggering effect in Black Survival Guide, or How to Live Through a Police Riot (2018), a work originally commissioned by the Delaware Art Museum to mark 50 years since the occupation by the National Guard following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Thomas combined text from the historic document—originally created as a practical manual to help African Americans survive an occupation—with images taken from News Journal photographs of the time. By encouraging viewers to activate these works via flash, Thomas invites them to resurrect, recover and even save images from being lost to history, ensuring they remain visible and gain prominence in our collective memory.

Sculpture continues to be a vital mode of public engagement for Thomas, providing him with opportunities for building community through shared experience. His punctum sculptures take inspiration from Roland Barthes’ photographic theory which describes a detail or passage within an image—the ‘punctum’—that emotionally resonates, sticks with or ‘pierces’ a viewer. Originally sourced from archival photographs, Thomas has begun to use more universal gestures in his newer compositions, as in Community (2024), where isolated hands linking with arms create a circle of power that conveys love, support and connection. In E Pluribus Unum (2020), an eight-foot stainless steel arm points towards the sky with strength while incorporating viewers into its brilliant reflective surface. The nature and scale of these sculptures mirrors their varying iterations in public spaces nationwide while also speaking to Thomas’ longstanding commitment to reconciling the effects of the past on our present moment in history.

Jack Shainman stated, "Few artists are able to interpret history in ways that provide new strategies for understanding the present. Hank Willis Thomas has done this consistently throughout his career with successive bodies of work that blend technical sophistication with metaphoric depth. Exhibiting Hank's work in our Tribeca gallery—itself embodying a beautiful but complicated period in American history—promises to be a fitting example of what we envisioned for the space, one where the past can be reanimated by contemporary visions and new material sensibilities.”