Hank Willis Thomas: Liberty

June 3 to September 5, 2016 - This exhibition explores issues of identity, media, race, and popular culture through sculptures, photographs, and text-based works. He often appropriates recognizable imagery from advertisements and branding campaigns in order to question the ways in which commercial media distorts the ways in which audiences see themselves and each other. 

As the Public Art Fund, NY states, “Liberty is a life-size, candy-coated bronze sculpture derived from a 1986 found photograph of a Harlem Globetrotter. He spins a basketball on his finger, in the likeness of the Statue of Liberty, which is featured in the background of the image. In a digital era where electronic devices mediate our viewing experiences, the three-dimensional arm, appropriated from the photograph, invites the viewer to consider the framing and context of the images that surround us.”