Hank Willis Thomas

Hank Willis Thomas stands among the most significant conceptual artists of our time, and his photographic work plays a central role in a practice that deeply decodes issues of Black identity and its perceptions in media and popular culture. Over the past two decades, Thomas’s work has achieved wide international recognition, and his work is held in over 70 private and public collections around the world, including MoMA, LACMA, National Gallery of Art, and the Guggenheim, among countless others.

Wayfarer is a series of work Thomas was initially commissioned by The International Center of Photography for a site-specific installation in 2013. The project, made in collaboration with artist Sanford Biggers (who serves as the model in these pictures) explores notions of identity and theatricality in relationship to the starkness of the subject’s black and white suit. Inspired by 19th century vaudeville performance, the 14 images of this collection perform in subversive unison to insinuate the stark perceptions of skin tone as a mode of social identity. The hybridized subject of these pictures performs for us, gracefully balancing the dualities of his costume while considering how non-linear identities are received by the broader cultural gaze.

In the broader scope, Wayfarer is a part of Thomas’ larger practice of raising questions about Blackness and how it is defined and perceived. In some respects, the pictures satirize the notion of racial identity as being so fixed and static as media culture so often tries to convince us. Confronting these pictures becomes an exercise in our own preconceptions, daring viewers to settle for the clear divides between black and white and a superficial boundary in which one tone cannot cross into the other. In reality, what Wayfarer strives for is the recognition that as a performance, and as a fiction, the subject obscures the truth that common narratives of racial and social dualities meld together far more often than we’re allowed to realize.