Hank Willis Thomas

Hank Willis Thomas is a conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to perspective, identity, commodity, media, and popular culture. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad, including the International Center of Photography, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Musée du quai Branly, Hong Kong Arts Centre, and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art.

His collaborative projects include Question Bridge: Black Males; In Search Of The Truth (The Truth Booth); The Writing on the Wall; The Gun Violence Memorial Project; and For Freedoms, an artist-led organization that models and increases creative civic engagement, discourse & direct action.

Thomas was the 2022 U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts honoree from the Office of Art in Embassies, Washington DC. Additionally he is the a recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2019), The Guggenheim Fellowship (2018), AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize (2017), Soros Equality Fellowship (2017), Aperture West Book Prize (2008), Renew Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation (2007), and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Award (2006).

His Hayom object:
Hank Willis Thomas' seder plate is centered around a teaching attributed to the Talmud stating that 'the highest form of wisdom is kindness’. A Seder plate is used for the Seder dinners at the beginning of Passover. It traditionally holds six symbolic foods, each of which symbolizes a part of the Passover story, which commemorates the Exodus and the Jews’ freedom from slavery in Egypt. Here, the shiny gold lines divide the plate into six sections for the six ritual foods.