Skip to Content

The Arts Intel Report

Hanks Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal…

Oct 12, 2019 – Jan 12, 2020
1219 SW Park Ave, Portland, OR 97205

How to describe Hank Willis Thomas’s art? Deft, sharp, takes no prisoners. In this major retrospective featuring 90 works, Willis Thomas brings jolts of conceptual clarity to politically loaded subjects. (Example: In a 2003 photograph, the shaved head of an African American man is branded with the Nike swoosh.) Willis Thomas is “asking us to reframe our perceptions,” says co-curator Sara Krajewski, “so that we can better understand and combat the systems that dehumanize us.” —E.C.