LONDON.- Pace is presenting Kinship of the Soul, Hank Willis Thomas’s second solo exhibition with the gallery and his first at Pace in London.

On view from November 20 to December 21, the presentation showcases a new body of retroreflective collages that continue Thomas’s exploration of the histories of abstraction through the lenses of colonization, globalization, and appropriation, with reference to Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, and Henri Matisse. These works, which reveal latent images depending on their lighting and the viewer’s perspective, underscore Thomas’s interest in using wayfinding materials to illuminate often overlooked histories and narratives.

Known for his conceptual work across various media—including sculpture, screen printing, photography, video, and installation—Thomas thoughtfully examines subjects related to mass media, popular culture, consumerism, and identity. He is deeply engaged in both the construction and consumption of images, employing nuanced perspectives to inject meaning across his œuvre.

The exhibition’s title —Kinship of the Soul—is borrowed from novelist and storyteller Isaac Bashevis Singer. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has described Singer’s phrase as capturing “that indefinable something that connects all of us together.” The new works that Thomas presents in London often reveal a sea of faces drawn from archival images of historical protests worldwide, humanizing movements for social change and emphasizing the intimate scale of the forces driving them. For this body of work, Thomas has incorporated collaged images from his ongoing photo and archival research, along with protest material specific to the UK. By capturing and intertwining moments of historical unease and protest across the UK, Thomas integrates them into his larger global dialogue, with the location of the exhibition serving as a vital component in his exploration of interconnected struggles worldwide.

Throughout the exhibition, Thomas references Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, and Henri Matisse, alluding to their shared creative "kinship of the soul"—a concept that, for Thomas, embodies the accumulation of knowledge that has preceded us, a journey that is neither linear nor easily traced. These artists were at the vanguard of Modernism and modernist thought, creating bold and innovative work that heralded a new era of art and culture. Images from Bearden’s Odysseus series, Douglas’s cover design for Wallace Thurman’s novel The Blacker the Berry, and Matisse’s iconic Icarus figure intertwine, merge, and transform across Thomas’s new works.

Over the last ten years, Thomas has been experimenting with the retroreflective medium, creating mixed media works from retroreflective vinyl (a material typically used on road signage) that reveal two distinct scenes, transformed by ambient and flash lighting. From one perspective, Thomas’s artworks present bold figurations, abstractions, and landscapes in saturated colors; from another, they reveal fragmented archival images drawn from his production of other retroreflective works over the past decade. As these elements converge and shift, they play with both perception and meaning, generating new layers of imagery and ideas that lay hidden in plain sight. Thomas’s retroreflective works serve as both a personal record of his artistic process and an ongoing dialogue with the historical references that weave through his practice.

In the UK, and concurrent with Kinship of the Soul, works by Thomas are featured in Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, through January 5, 2025. Additionally, Thomas’s monumental bronze sculpture, All Power to All People (Bronze) (2023), is on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park through August 2025. On November 14, Pace will open Kinship: Irving Penn, Curated by Hank Willis Thomas.

Working across various modes of art-making such as sculpture, screen-printing, neon, mixed media, and installation art, Hank Willis Thomas is a conceptual artist widely known for his investigation of themes relating to mass media, identity, popular culture, and perspective.

Thomas often seeks out and utilizes recognizable icons from popular branding and marketing campaigns. In using icons and other nods to popular culture, he encourages the viewer to question commercial consumer representation and the racial stereotypes it perpetuates. A common practice in his artistic process, Thomas looks to the ways popular imagery informs how people perceive themselves and others around the world, comparing this practice to the one of a “visual cultural archaeologist.” A trained photographer, his work spans across many disciplines and media, and his public works always encourage a form of viewer participation and contribution.

Throughout his career, Thomas has examined the structures, myths, and images that reinforce economic and racial prejudice, as exemplified by mass media, advertising, and popular culture. Thomas’ seminal series, Unbranded (2005–08), which grew out of his B®anded series, builds upon these themes, focusing on the intersection of race, class, media, and popular culture. Mining historical advertisements from the 1960s, he digitally removes all text and logos from the image, revealing the underlying structures of prejudice that inform advertising and highlighting what is really for sale in these images.

Begun in 2019, Thomas’ most recent project, The Embrace (2022), is a memorial inspired by an archival photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, embracing after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. In collaboration with Mass Design Group, Embrace Boston, and The Boston Foundation, the 20-foot tall, 32-foot-wide bronze sculpture is a continuation of the artist’s inquiry into economic and racial justice and an ode to collaboration, love, and equality. It was unveiled in January 2023 at its permanent home in Boston Common, where, in 1965, Dr. King led a march from the Roxbury neighborhood to the downtown public park.

Thomas’ collaborative projects include Question Bridge: Black Males, In Search Of The Truth (The Truth Booth) and For Freedoms, which was awarded the 2017 ICP Infinity Award for New Media and Online Platform. In 2012, Question Bridge: Black Males debuted at the Sundance Film Festival and was selected for the New Media Grant from the Tribeca Film Institute. Thomas is also the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship (2018), AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize (2017), Soros Equality Fellowship (2017) and is a former member of the New York City Public Design Commission.

Thomas’ work has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad, including at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, Pennsylvania (2008); Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland (2009); International Center of Photography, New York (2013); California African American Museum, Los Angeles (2016); and SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia (2017). His work has been included in important group exhibitions at the International Center of Photography, New York (2013); Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain (2015); Brooklyn Museum, New York (2016); and the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2016), among others. His work is held in numerous public collections worldwide, including the Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; Smart Museum of Art, Chicago; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Thomas earned a BFA from New York University, New York, in 1998 and an MA/MFA from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, in 2004. He received honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, Maryland, and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, Portland, Maine, in 2017. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.