Hank Willis Thomas’ latest exhibition, “I Am Many,” opens today at his longtime gallerist Jack Shainman’s monumental Tribeca space. Thomas, as usual, is in rarified company. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the United States’ 2023 Medal of Arts Award, he is only the third to show in the recently opened flagship—a meticulously restored neo-Italianate hall tucked away in Tribeca’s historic Clock Tower Building.
Through a wide range of media spanning painting, textiles, neon, prints, collage and, of course, sculpture, Thomas lays bare the histories, power structures, and cultural phenomena that have shaped civic life as we know it today. The works shown in “I Am Many” are no exception, but the show itself is exceptional in its scope and ambition to forge connections between the seemingly disparate mediums, historical moments, and cultural narratives that comprise Thomas’s vast oeuvre.
“It’s new,” the artist admits, “to not come in with such a specific agenda. As an artist who thinks so much about American history I’m bringing all of these different ideas and different work to this space. How it interacts with the space, because it is so new, I’m excited to learn.” More than novelty, there’s an unlikely spirit of presence and even renewed optimism that runs through “I Am Many.” “At a time when museums are being rethought, and education is being rethought and history is being rethought, it feels timely that my work, which deals with history and education and is made for galleries and museums, would be exhibiting at this moment,” Thomas tells Surface.
By “this moment,” Thomas is referring to the occupations of Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. by the nation’s armed forces, and government interference in the museum and art world. But, the artist emphasizes, “We have been here before.” One of the cornerstones of “I Am Many” is Black Survival Guide, Or How to Live Through a Police Riot, a retroreflective vinyl composition commissioned by the Delaware Art Museum in 2018 to memorialize the 50th anniversary of the National Guard’s occupation in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. Flash photography reveals the work’s sublayers to curious viewers.
It’s this work and its spirit of transformation—from bystander to participant, archivist, and one of untold keepers of a collective memory—that seems to embody the essence of the show. We may have been here before, but, he shows, together we’ve persisted. “While there are moments of potency,” he says, “I hope that people walk away with a spirit of community and cooperation and transcendence.”
