Artist Talk: Hank Willis Thomas

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The Utah Museum of Fine Arts welcomes artist Hank Willis Thomas for a free public talk.

Working across sculpture, retroreflective and lenticular works, textile pieces, and mixed-media assemblages, Thomas explores intersections of past and present—revealing continuities in lived experience and offering messages of love, connection, and hope.

The UMFA is honored to currently have Hank Willis Thomas’s Pitch Blackness / Off Whiteness on loan from Art Bridges Foundation. This neon artwork is on view in the Elizabeth Farran Tozer and W. James Tozer, Jr. Lobby, and is one of the first things you see when you enter the Museum.

“Where you stand affects what you see. Your notion of reality is completely shaped by your perspective and what you bring to what you’re looking at.”
–Hank Willis Thomas

Thomas’s neon artworks use wordplay to spark questions about the construction of language and how it shapes our perceptions of race and society. Pitch Blackness / Off Whiteness turns the adjectives “off-white” and “pitch-black” into the nouns “whiteness” and “blackness.”

Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976, Plainfield, NJ) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and is a conceptual artist whose work examines themes of identity, perspective, commodity, media, and popular culture. Thomas’ interdisciplinary practice spans sculpture, photography, retroreflectives, quilt-based works, film, and more, often challenging the viewer to critically engage with the complexities of contemporary culture.

Exhibitions include:
- The Portland Museum of Art, Portland, OR (2019)
- Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR (2020)
- The Cincinnati Art Museum, OH (2020)
- The National Building Museum, Washington, D. C. (2021)
- The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA (2024)