Transcript

- [aja monet] Hello listeners. I hope you all are doing well in these very challenging times. I want to personally thank you for joining me in The Sound Bath and extend the same question that I ask all of our guests to you. So click the link in the show notes to leave me a voice message and let me know, what sounds bring you a sense of calm or wellbeing? What does care mean to you and what kind of care are you exploring right now? We can't wait to hear from you. And don't forget to like or follow us and leave us a review wherever you find your podcasts.

- [Hank Willis Thomas] We deserve to tell our own ambitious, audacious stories that are gonna inspire people to get out of their chairs and not fight for what they believe in, but to love for what they believe in, to actually embrace and engage around the things with people in non-violent ways that are inspiring which we know has happened before.

- [aja monet] Hello, listeners. My name is aja monet and you are listening to The Sound Bath, a podcast brought to you by Lush Cosmetics. We are so excited to have you join us for today's episode. Today we have Hank Willis Thomas who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He 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 in New York, the Hong Kong Arts Centre, and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Netherlands among so many other places. Hank is a really good friend who I have had the honor of collaborating and strategizing with over past, I guess, at least now 10 years. We first met in Paris where he was there for a residency and I was living life as a poet trying to just make it day to day. And we grew to be really great, I want to say sharpeners of each other's thoughts, sharpeners of each other's ideas. And our conversations are always very, very inspiring, intentional, thoughtful, and at times very challenging. We've learned a lot over the years from one another and it's been really wonderful to see his career take hold in the world and the ways that he uses art to mobilize the public in today's society. So excited to have you all listening for this conversation. Let's get into it. Hi, Hank.

- [Hank Willis Thomas] Hey aja.

- [aja monet] I'm so excited to have you join me for this conversation. It is a real joy and treat to always be in conversation with you. I was sharing a little earlier that every time we speak, I feel like we both grow a little bit and think somehow either differently or just more expanded in our conversations with one another and our ways of seeing the world. So I'm just honored to have you with me and I wanted to just give you an opportunity to share how you're feeling right now, what's going on in your heart and mind at this current moment.

- [Hank Willis Thomas] Thank you. Well, I think of you as my little big sister. You are so wise and have so much to offer the world, so much incredible insight. And you're still so young. I am feeling great. I do have a little bit of a stuffy nose and sore throat, but that comes with the territory of being a parent of very young children. And overall, there's a lot of madness going on in the world, a lot of things to be fearful and angry about. And there's also the fact that we're alive still, which is something to celebrate and to be joyous and be excited about.

- [aja monet] Yeah, that's really great to hear you say because I guess you could go down a path of despair at this time. We have yet to speak to someone that is a self proclaimed, but also professional visual artist, I think, in the world. And your work is so very intentional, and as a conceptual artist, there's so much that I think you do in very clever ways. So I wanted to ask you about how do you go from being an artist that has a specific medium to then considering yourself a conceptual artist that moves across many mediums? And what does it mean to be a conceptual artist for you right now in today's society?

- [Hank Willis Thomas] I've always been really inspired by a quote from a James Baldwin lecture. He says, "The artist's struggle for humanity must be seen as the struggle, which is universal and daily for all human beings to get to become human beings." And when I think of that quote, it really does summarize almost my artist statement that really at the end of the day, I am authentically attempting to express my voice, not as an artist, not through a specific medium, but as a human being. And that can take the shape of a sculpture, a photograph, a video, a performance, a film. But at the end of the day, it also happens in the way that I relate to another person. The way that I carry myself, the way that I smile is a creative act, right? So I did study photography. My mother, Deborah Willis is a legend. She's a photo historian and a photographer. And I grew up at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the National African American Museum Project, which later became the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian. So I grew up surrounded in archives of ephemera of African American and African and Afro-Caribbean history and culture. And I was always touched by the photographs because my mother was a photographer. There was a dark room in our kitchen often. And I have always just loved pictures. At some point about 20 years ago, everyone got a phone and then very quickly got a phone with a camera in it. And so virtually everyone almost overnight became photographers, amateur photographers, at least. But with the advent of social media and especially Instagram, being a photographer for me became less exciting because it was less about the solitary experience and of the searcher that I was really loving and the relationship between nature and mechanics of the camera. And also just being given permission to look at and stare at people. And I went to undergrad at NYU, spent a lot of money getting a photography degree, and then in the middle of grad school at California College of the Arts, this shift happened in the medium of photography, and I realized I was either gonna have to like relearn everything, digital cameras, digital software, or take what I did learn about the world through photographic education, which is really learning about looking and apply my knowledge of visual culture and critique through looking to other mediums. And so that led me to make sculpture, and then video, and then printmaking, and on and on and on. And so I've really taken the label off, which I used to really love, of being a photographer and just call myself a person. And that is my creative act, being a conscious person.

- [aja monet] I was gonna say, there's something deeper than just being a person in the world for you. While I think we all have the ability to tap into our creative instincts and different creative abilities, I guess I wonder what is the difference between someone who identifies in the world as an artist versus the ordinary person, the ordinary citizen? And is there something that you feel we should be doing to reconcile the difference between the two?

- [Hank Willis Thomas] I think there isn't a difference. It's just a matter of what we call ourselves. We can be making art and then call it embroidery or a hobby or whatever. People didn't embrace hip hop as an art form, but it was art nonetheless, right? They didn't think about the fashion that the youth of that generation, early hip hop generation, were making as art. And each of us has the choice to live our lives as a practice of self-expression. For many Black men, maybe all, creativity is essential to our survival that we are constantly creatively finding ways to not be seen as a threat or to be seen as such a threat that no one would ever threaten us. And when I talk about wanting to be seen as a person, every time I drive by a police car, I'm like, uh-oh, will my humanity be forgotten in a split second? And this desire to be seen as a person and to do all that I can to uplift my own humanity and the humanity of every other person is in hopes that if anyone does ever need to make that split second decision, they remember that they are a person and that I am too.

- [aja monet] Yeah because that's one of the other sides of that, right? Is that maybe the thing isn't to get someone else to see you as a person, but for them to see themselves as a person. Because in the moment that we start to, I guess judge other people, we not only dehumanize someone else often in moments where we wanna be othered or we want to other, but we also in the process of dehumanizing someone else, we are also dehumanized. And I think that doesn't often come across in the conversation where it's like the victim of the harm continues to be victimized and in some ways spoken of in this very precious way, like, oh, this is the person that's the victim, clearly. But there's also a way that the person who does the victimizing or holds the hatred is also a victim of that. So I wonder how we reconcile that as well.

- [Hank Willis Thomas] Yeah, they certainly lose a piece of their humanity whether they know it or not. And unfortunately we've come up with so many clever devices to justify inhumane things so that we can move on. I go back to personhood is that there is something about personhood that for me implies an awareness and maybe even a responsibility. When you were talking, I was also thinking about what happens when we put on labels. So when we put on a uniform, we stop being the person we were before we put on a uniform because the uniform defines the way we see ourselves and the way others see us. Also, when we put on a label, whether it be a racial or gender or national label, it others others, right? And then puts us into boxes that often don't allow us to actually touch people who might really benefit from our touch or that we might benefit from touching.

- [aja monet] That's really interesting because it makes me think about your work. A lot of your work deals with brands or turning branding on its head and the way that we see what a brand can be or do in the world. I think you also play a lot with advertising and advertisements at some point in some of your work. And so it makes me wonder like how obsessed has society become with brands and branding and how by virtue of that capitalism being ingrained in our interior lives as much as it is externally in what we buy and what possessions we try to have and consume that it's also kind of an extension of our identity, this notion of branding or need to be branded. And so I wonder what you think about how branding has affected the psyche of the average American in society.

- [Hank Willis Thomas] Well, I always start by saying that race is the most successful advertising campaign of all time where certain people from a subsection of Asia decided that they were the center of the universe and thus told a story that basically meant that the world revolved around them and that there were others on the planet who were somewhat less perfect than them. And they looked like this and they dressed like this and they spoke like this. And that mythology literally defines all of our lives, and that was the power of the Nazis, right? They were only around for like 12 years at least being in power, and we're still talking about them almost a century later because it was really good advertising. After getting their butts kicked in World War I, they decided that they needed to rebrand themselves and brand themselves around this idea of whiteness that had been kind of developing over the past probably 300 years in Europe, and that mythology can be really motivating. I am gonna go off into a digression, but when you think about the car that's called the Love Bug, What kind of car is that?

- [aja monet] It looks like a little love bug, doesn't it?

- [Hank Willis Thomas] But what brand is the Love Bug?

- [aja monet] Is that a Volkswagen? What is it?

- [Hank Willis Thomas] Yes. And you know what Volkswagen means?

- [aja monet] It's something crazy.

- [Hank Willis Thomas] The People's Wagon. And Hitler, Adolf Hitler, is a person that said that everyone in his country deserved to have an automobile called the People's Wagon, the Volkswagen and what was a Nazi vehicle throughout the entirety of World War II, 20 years later it was rebranded as the Love Bug. And we would look at Star Wars and Darth Vader and the Empire, and you see like Nazis, the Nazis are still alive because the branding was so good. And what's scary to me about branding is that we can buy into all kinds of unhealthy things all the time. Because at the end of the day, we are attracted to labels and storytelling that makes us believe that life is simple. And part of what I've always been interested in as an artist person is that ability for me to adapt that language of advertising. They talk about things that advertising couldn't responsibly talk about no matter how hard it tried, because it's necessity to be reductive.

- [aja monet] That's interesting because then it means branding is an artistic practice for some, I guess I wonder what is that fine line between what is art and what isn't? Is there a line? Do you see all art as political? Can art be, even the non-conceptual art is it conceptual in its very nature. I wonder as there are artists who I know believe that they're creating art just for art's sake, just for the sake of beauty, do you find that to be political in some way? Or that there is a concept even in the work that aches to not have a concept?

- [Hank Willis Thomas] I remember Theaster Gates said something at TED when asked a question about is his attempt to make certain things beautiful when people are struggling for basic human rights, is he somehow escaping responsibility? And he said that he believed that beauty is a human right. And that was really powerful 'cause it shifted my perspective on the priority. There was a famous saying that was allegedly on a poster that a protestor was holding up in the 1900, early 1900s that said we want bread and we want roses too. And the need for beauty to also be a part of everyone's life is I think the greatest advocacy for why art is essential. And therefore all art is political. And even during the pandemic we learned that every breath is political. And this desire to extract art from humanity is actually perhaps the last frontier of colonialism. In previous eras, you didn't have to know how to dance to be a dancer. There was this expectation that as a member of society that you participate in culture and that you as whoever you are can make life beautiful through your participation and keeping the culture alive. There's the arts and the sciences, and you drill down into the arts and you have all of these specializations that keep us segregated from being able to participate in so many other parts of life. And so I am constantly reminding myself and others that I don't have to know how to do something to be an active part of it, of doing it. Even if I am not as masterful as others, I feel it in my heart when I put myself out there, and especially when other people actually see that I'm putting myself out there and like, yeah. Okay, let's go.

- [aja monet] You're listening to The Sound Bath brought to you by Lush Cosmetics and my name is aja monet. I'm currently in conversation with my friend Hank Willis Thomas, a conceptual artist working with themes related to perspective, identity, commodity, media and popular culture. Next up I want to talk to Hank about how art can change the world in a more intentional way. But first ... When you talk about the difference between being an artist or just a person, how much of the creative process is so important and integral for people to have the ability to create with one another. And so I wondered about what you see your role as an artist is in democratizing art for the people. We touched on a little bit For Freedoms, but what For Freedoms is doing is really bringing, for lack of better words, fine art to the people in a really interesting way by way of billboards and activations and actions across the country. What do you see the role of artists, at this juncture, in essentially creating a public that really understands the creative process?

- [Hank Willis Thomas] For Freedoms is a organization that I co-initiated. F-O-R Freedoms. So we're F-O-R Freedoms, not F-O-U-R Freedoms because we are for freedoms that we may not even agree with now but may evolve to. We recognize that when we talk about art, we're talking largely about a 30,000, 40,000 year conversation between human beings and different generations, different backgrounds, et cetera. And each adding to the next, most of what we know about previous societies is through the art that they left. We don't know much about the languages, sometimes we don't know much about how they lived, where they lived, but we do know about their art. And so there's reason to believe that once we're dead and gone, most of what people will remember with us, it's not what's on our computers, it's gonna be what we leave behind as art. And our art will take the shape of McDonald's arches and Nike swooshes because, as well as all the things that are artifacts in museums and buildings. But I really came to the realization that as artists we actually are the voice of our era, of our epoch. And that we have a very cherished role in history always. And it just so happens at this moment, art has been seen as a sideshow or something that can only be applied in the service of commerce. But there's so, so much more to what we do. When we're in our studios, we're actually conjuring something. Like I believe that we, well I know that all artists live in the future because nothing we make is for right now, it's always for the future. It's all for the future audience, for the future people, for the lasting impact that it might have on somebody when they read it long after we're gone. We're time travelers, we're psychics, we're shamans. It's pretty dope to be an artist. And when I talk about everyone having the capacity to be an artist, is that it's true. When we call something art, it allows us to think creatively about things that we already know. Much like when we call something political, it implies that there's something at stake to the larger society in whatever's being discussed. And so within context of For Freedoms, we've decided to use art as an engine to put critical discourse into political discourse using fine art thinking by moving away from the black and white, left and right, a political kind of ways in which we've been conditioned to see ourselves instead acknowledging that all of us are spheres that are organic, that are prickly in some areas and smooth in others and fuzzy in others. And that there's no simple list of theoretical possibilities that are gonna define us as individuals. And so we're acknowledging that a lot of the things that the Democrats are fighting today, like mass incarceration and defense of marriage, and many, many other issues are issues that, welfare reform, are issues that like Democrats like Bill Clinton actually put into place. And it's not to critique him as an individual, it's just that what was seen as progressive yesterday is seen as conservative today. And so there's a lot of opportunities.

- [aja monet] Also like the illusion of progressive, right? And progressive for who? 'cause like at that time there were definitely advocates and organizers on the ground who were critical of Bill Clinton. There were people resisting that at that time, were organizing against Bill Clinton and what he was trying to implement in the public policy.

- [Hank Willis Thomas] But were they Democrats? No, because that's my point that the left and right wing binary of being a Democrat or Republican, even like Donald Trump has probably done more in my perspective to complicate and expose the hypocrisy of the whole political system than anybody else. And while his style may not be a style that I appreciate at all, it's like, dude, this whole thing is a sham and he showed it. And he showed it because he was progressive when he needed to be, he was conservative when he needed to be, and then he just decided just like to put it all together to make a hodgepodge of whatever the heck. And it's not a mistake that he is an advertising genius, that he is a master storyteller, that he is a powerful creator. And my belief is that while he might be an awesome creator, me and all the people I know, should we choose to actually fully engage, can tell a thousand fold better stories. But instead we're too busy talking about him and what he's done wrong and what other people did wrong and blah, blah, blah. And we deserve to tell our own ambitious, audacious stories that are gonna inspire people to get out of their chairs and not fight for what they believe in, but to love for what they believe in to actually embrace and engage around the things with people in non-violent ways that are inspiring, which we know has happened before. It's happened often using the spirit of Black joy, before it had become so easily commodified. I'm really hoping that we can both use the language of advertising, use the methods of commodity culture, but having the freedom of artists to be like, I'm gonna use it to tell my story in my way and not be stuck in the mire of wanting to be relevant now knowing that the true relevance is the long game.

- [aja monet] Yeah. Well you've been quoted saying that art can change the world in a more intentional way and history is waiting to be told. In my thought, I'm wondering what ways do you feel like your work is disrupting history and interrogating history as you create?

- [Hank Willis Thomas] Well, I know it is because I'm talking to you. And whoever is listening to this is listening to it in the future, therefore, we have made history. I wanted also point out that protest is also performance, like it's a creative act to protest. And perhaps it's become less creative and therefore less effective over the past 20 or 30 years. And so what are new ways of actually protesting is the question that I think should be on the mind and the heart of every person who has a desire to nudge us forward. I personally believe life is getting better and the world is getting better for more people. That progress is happening, where it's taking us, I have no idea. I have incredible opportunity ahead of me that I hope you join me in the unveiling of The Embrace, which is a 20 by 40 foot monument to Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King that's going to be unveiled in the Boston Common on Martin Luther King Day, 2023. What's super exciting about that is that Boston Common is the oldest continuously used public space in the United States dating back to like 1600s. And Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King met as young students in Boston who were temporary expatriates, I guess, from the segregated south into the segregated north and fell in love. And their love had a ripple effect that we still feel their embrace. And we have so many monuments to victims of war, heroes of war. We have very few monuments to love and to heroes of love. And I believe as a political act, maybe as a protest act, to put a monument to love and lovers in a historic location like that is shifting the way that monuments will be considered all over the world.

- [aja monet] Yeah, I love that. I'm definitely gonna write a poem for that one. My mind is triggered in all the great ways. Yeah, I'm a lover. I love love. I would argue all of our protests are acts of love, even when we don't understand them, and even our expressions of our anger and outrage is often a way of love, at least in the most non-violent way.

- [Hank Willis Thomas] Hate is love. There is no hate without love.

- [aja monet] Well, that's interesting because you had your, that piece that was in the space that we were at the gallery, was it Pace Gallery?

- [Hank Willis Thomas] Yeah.

- [aja monet] It was something like that, right? Wasn't it love is hate or love ...

- [Hank Willis Thomas] I think it said love and hate and hate is love.

- [aja monet] And I don't know, I was like definitely like feeling a different way about it.

- [Hank Willis Thomas] You said something to me.

- [aja monet] Yeah, I think I definitely said something to you about it. But it was great because pieces that can bring more critical discussion and allow people to not just agree, I think is really important in our society right now that we have not learned how to enthusiastically disagree with one another, to embrace the disagreement, to embrace the difference, and to lean into the difference and to really dance in the difference and understand that the difference is not a threat to our society but that it's something that should be celebrated in light of the fact that there's so many ways of looking, there's so many ways of seeing in the world. And it would be really beautiful if we could create a society that could embrace the many ways of seeing. And so that leaves me to like something more contemporary that's going on in just in popular conversation right now. I feel like he's like Voldemort, he who should not be named, had a shirt that came out that was White Lives Matter, none other than Ye, and it was very triggering for a lot of people, but it did spark, whether he's intentional or not, it did spark a lot of discussion and controversy. And in light of that, Yasiin put out a shirt where he had the V blacked out, which is similar to you in your piece that was All Lies Matter. And I don't know if they knew that, of course, but it was really interesting that you had created that piece like several years ago. And then this is now currently a popular conversation. And I was wondering is art exempt of accountability and responsibility in the ways that it can trigger and instigate hate and crime and more violence into the world? Should the artist be concerned? What is the artist's responsibility in being concerned about how the art is received in the world and what it can do to either instigate the best of us or the worst of us?

- [Hank Willis Thomas] Yeah, but that was branding, right? And I think Kanye also understands the power of branding, right? He's a marketing genius. Is he gonna sell, is he gonna get his name in the news? Are people are gonna talk about it? Part of what I'm thinking about, like what if Kanye dropped a White Lives Matter shirt and nobody cared?

- [aja monet] Yeah, exactly.

- [Hank Willis Thomas] But instead we got organizations, people protesting the shirt and I'm like, you know you're promoting the shirt, right? That's what Donald Trump and now Kanye has understood that any press is good press. So you get people rallying against you, oh, the White Lives Matter shirt, we have to protest against it. It's like, what? What if we just like swipe left on that joint?

- [aja monet] I guess, you know, to your point, there is something brilliant in it, but to note that someone is brilliant at being vicious, it's a bit psychotic to think about like ...

- [Hank Willis Thomas] Is he brilliant at being vicious or is he actually, that's what I'm saying.

- [aja monet] Well I think it's a fine line because I'm saying the Nazi conversation, about Adolf Hitler could be the best brand, or Trump could be the best brand or advertiser in the world, it's almost like acknowledging that our oppressors are so brilliant because of how strategic their evil is and how intentional their evil is. I guess I'm cautious of walking down that line of acknowledging that as brilliance or genius or even anything remotely intelligent and cohesive because to me, the far more brilliant thing would be a strategy that moves us more towards love. And that's actually the far more difficult thing that can collect--

- [Hank Willis Thomas] Being more brilliant doesn't take away from the brilliance that is, the dark side of the force is still the force, right? If we deny the brilliance of the people who are trying to kill and destroy us then we can't learn. How do you actually build a counter defense or actually even develop an offense when you can't even acknowledge the mastery of the attack? Some people have to and have the right and deserve and as society we need to like deal with the pain and the trauma and all the other stuff, which you've seen me do a lot in my own work. Part of my hope with For Freedoms is that we are for, it's an opportunity for me to get out of my own pain body and be for things rather than against things. So when I talk about the brilliance of certain people, it's really because again, they're just people. They're not any better than any of the rest of us. They're just willing to go there. And if we see where they're going and we don't like it, the invitation is for us to go places that we'd like.

- [aja monet] It's a very nuanced conversation, but it's also clearly people are being killed. So I just keep going back to like, what is the responsibility of the artist at this time?

- [Hank Willis Thomas] Responsibility of the artist is to follow their hearts and not to be suppressed by what people think in the current moment. Because as we know, James Baldwin is way more celebrated today than he was during his lifetime, right? So if we're gonna compromise our voice because people in our era don't like it, then we're gonna die with that era.

- [aja monet] Yeah. So this is a podcast that we spend a lot of time talking about sound. I wanted to ask you, what are sounds that make you feel creative, inspired, a sense of calm, what are sounds that really resonate deeply with you?

- [Hank Willis Thomas] Synthesizers. Echoes.

- [aja monet] Okay, that's perfect. Thank you so much.

- [Hank Willis Thomas] Likewise to you, love. Take care. Thank you.

- [aja monet] Thank you so much for listening and I encourage you to tune in next time to The Sound Bath. Please enjoy this beautiful sonic meditation.