Hank Willis Thomas is an artist who has wrestled long and hard with the infinite possibilities and occasionally overwhelming paradoxes of America - an unrequited relationship he's also had with the Stars and Stripes itself.
“As an American, I have been trained to love the flag. I have been trained to believe in its values. But as a human being, as an African American, I have been forced to ask questions," he's said when asked about his iconic, much revered, flag works.
Earning his BFA from New York University, New York, in 1998 and an MA/MFA from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, in 2004, throughout his career, Thomas has examined the structures, myths, and images that reinforce economic and racial prejudice, as exemplified by mass media, advertising, identity, popular culture, and perspective.
Flags, in the varied forms of quilts, paintings and sculptures have played a significant role within his practice, alongside other modes of art-making which include screen printing, neon, mixed media, and installation.
In his 2018 work 15,580, each star of the flag represented an American life lost to gun violence since 2017, when Thomas's own cousin tragically was shot and killed in Philadelphia.
The bars of the flag and the bars of a prison cell were inextricably intertwined in his 2021 work, Land of the Free, a stark reminder that the U.S. imprisons more of its people than any other country.
Thomas embraces the flag as the signifier of the nation and its ideals yet subverts it to express injustices and inequities, quite literally woven into the fabric of America.
The artist has turned to a flag of his own for a new Artspace edition, Twilight’s Last Gleaming, 2024, which is based on his 2021 mixed media piece, At the twilight’s last gleaming, featuring deconstructed political and identity-based flags in reference to the U.S. national anthem.
He’d wanted to make an edition of this particular work for some time. “I think it is a way to crystallize this moment in American and political history,” he tells Artspace. “And so, how best to do that than in an edition? This divided nation being patch-worked together with all these different agendas and mission statements is what I wanted to highlight as a new flag.”
Twilight’s Last Gleaming, 2024 is a 28-color silkscreen print on 310gsm Arches Platine paper. It measures 13 x 19 inches and is an edition of 75, each signed and numbered on the front. It is $1,500 unframed. As always with Artspace editions a number of framed options are available. Proceeds from the sale of the print will benefit For Freedoms.
Thomas’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad, including at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, Pennsylvania; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; International Center of Photography, New York; California African American Museum, Los Angeles; and SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia. 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.
HANK WILLIS THOMAS - Twilight's Last Gleaming, 2024
Photography Brica Wilcox
In 2016 he co-founded For Freedoms with fellow artists and friends Eric Gottesman, Michelle Woo, and Wyatt Gallery. For Freedoms is an artist-led organization that centers art as a catalyst for creative civic engagement, discourse, and direct action. It has collaborated with over 1,000 artists on over 750 activations, including public art installations, billboard campaigns, exhibitions, town halls, and events across all 50 states.
Nearly all of For Freedoms’ campaigns have engaged the use of billboards to ask one question: How can a billboard (something used to communicate an action) be combined with Art (something intended to ask questions) to create new ways of thinking and talking about contemporary civil issues in America?
"I'm doing my part to tell some of the stories of our country: some of the triumphs, many of the struggles that we are yet to overcome, and have overcome," Thomas says.
We asked Hank Willis Thomas about the flag, For Freedoms, and the new edition, Twilight’s Last Gleaming, 2024.
What inspired you to create the original work from which the edition springs? This work was inspired by an invitation for a New York Times op-ed for artists to reimagine the American flag for today.
I couldn’t help but reflect on all of these beautiful, and sometimes charged, and threatening flags that have taken up a lot more brain and spirit space in my mind over the past ten years. This divided nation being patch-worked together with all these different agendas and mission statements is what I wanted to highlight in a new flag.
HANK WILLIS THOMAS - Twilight's Last Gleaming, 2024
The phrase twilight’s last gleaming has inspired books, films, comics, music and more – what attracted you to the words, first as a title, but also as a way to convey a deeper message? The National Anthem of the United States of America is known throughout the world as a piece of music, but the words of Francis Scott Key, who spoke about this pivotal moment in the war of 1812, really captured the spirit of hope in the darkest moments of the country, and maybe democracy.
I find that there is a similar sensibility of potential doom for the country and for the world if we don’t get it right. There are all of these seemingly conflicting passions, and movements, and organisations, and agendas, and parties, that are conspiring to manifest what they believe is the greatest hope for democracy.
The Star Spangled Banner of the United States, the flag that represents hope, and liberty, inspiration, peace, and justice for all, has all of these other flags under it that make up this artwork.
Is there a specific message you aimed to convey through the original work and now this limited edition? My message is that we’re in this together. Whether we like each other, whether we trust each other, whether we believe each other, whether we love each other, or hate each other - we’re in it together and history will show that.
How we manage and face this moment will actually dictate the future for future generations and so I’d like us to consciously acknowledge the collaboration with those who we are working alongside, even if it feels like they’re working against us.
HANK WILLIS THOMAS - Twilight's Last Gleaming, 2024
Photography Brica Wilcox
How difficult is it as an artist to make the message understood but keep that message open-ended enough to elicit a personal response in the viewer? Every artist has desires. We have dreams we have hopes, passions, and beliefs but, at the end of the day, the audience is who makes the work real. The people who view the work bring their own projections, they bring their own history and their own story to the work. At best, we can create a container that is a powerful and resonant reflection for their own stories.
That’s what I’m hoping to do, while knowing that it’s very hard to live this moment and not have a relationship to at least one of these flags, if not all of them. To see them all sewn together shows us a multitude of meanings, many that won’t be revealed to me until after I get to discuss it with more people.
Why choose this particular work for an edition? This work is something I’ve wanted to make an edition of for so long because I think it is a way to crystallize this moment in American and political history. And so, how best to do that than in an edition?
How do editions fit into your overall practice? I’ve often made work about mass distribution and about popular stories and storytelling, and I don’t believe my work has always been able to be shared with audiences in a broader way because there are so few limited edition works that I’ve put out in the world.
Now I want to do that more and more. So I’m excited about hopefully reaching more people with more work, with more prints.
HANK WILLIS THOMAS - Twilight's Last Gleaming, 2024
Photography Brica Wilcox
Do you see an edition such as this one engaging with audiences on a different visual and conceptual level to your unique works? Every medium has a messenger and a message. What I love about prints, in contrast to the original piece, which is a quilt, is that they can travel through space and time much easier than can a large, framed work of art.
I’m interested in the currency of prints, and the tradition of artists, especially in the 20th century, like Jasper Johns, and Rauschenberg, and Romare Bearden, or Elizabeth Catlett, who I love. I look at their prints all the time and I want to be part of that conversation.
Proceeds of the edition go to benefit For Freedoms. What inspired you to co-found For Freedoms and how has it made a change in the world? For Freedoms is a collaboration between hundreds, if not thousands, of people. It takes various forms and, much like any collaboration, it has obstacles to overcome, but these obstacles are obstacles that we specialise in as artists.
We fundamentally dedicate our lives to getting invested in complicated issues and struggling through confusion and adversity to make something that we believe is beautiful. We’ve done that with exhibitions and town halls and billboards and interactive experiences, convenings and congresses.
There's also a Monacelli book, For Freedoms: Where Do We Go From Here?, that comes with the edition. The book really is the greatest manifestation of our work. We know that hundreds of millions of people have seen these billboards. They’ve been all over the country - over 500 billboards over the course of eight years. You can’t measure that level of impact. I really am excited for more artists’ work to go out into the world in various forms, but especially in forms of media in which you don’t usually see fine art.
That’s why we really think For Freedoms can play a critical political discourse through implementing fine art thinking in the public conversation. Critical thinking is something that’s often missing, and something that we really want to highlight.
For Freedoms is essentially non-partisan, right? Yes it is. We believe that the false choice of left wing, right wing, is based off of non-productive and outdated paradigms.
Most of us inhabit various intersections at various points in time in political agendas and political eras. There’s no singular presidential candidate that can speak to the entirety of the needs of our society in a moment.
Some of us show us how much work we need to do, some of us show us how much we’ve accomplished. Both play a critical role.
Take a closer look at Twilight’s Last Gleaming, 2024, here. The limited edition comes with a copy of the Monacelli book For Freedoms: Where Do We Go From Here?, the first monograph by For Freedoms.
