Hank Willis Thomas

BIO
All Power to All People is an eight foot tall Afro pick with a power fist cast in aluminum. Hank Willis Thomas says the work is a symbol “to highlight ideas related to community, strength, perseverance, comradeship, and resistance to oppression.” Hank Willis Thomas’ All Power to All People has been called “a public art intervention around identity and representation”. Thomas’ Afro pick sculpture stands at eight feet tall and weighs close to 800 pounds. The Afro pick, as Thomas notes, “exists today as many things to different people: it is worn as adornment, a political emblem, and signature of collective identity. The Afro pick continues to develop itself as a testament to innovation.” The artist has expressed that the monument is placed in public spaces “to highlight ideas related to community, strength, perseverance, comradeship, and resistance to oppression.” Thomas’ work recalls the scale of Pop artist Claes Oldenburg’s monumental everyday objects, such as Clothespin and Paint Torch, while marking the lack of commemorative statues that address equal justice and belonging and drawing a contrast to existing sculptures memorializing figures that perpetuated inequity and violence in their time. (Americans for the Arts)

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