For Freedoms: 2020 Awakening
For Freedoms is an artist-led organization that harnesses the power of art to encourage civic engagement, public discourse, and direct action. Over the past two years, we have used our media platform to support various For Freedoms initiatives, including our recent participation in their 2020 Awakening campaign. Created to drive greater participation in American democracy and timed to coincide with the November elections, 2020 Awakening featured more than 100 billboards by over 85 artists in all 50 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands
Featured Artists
Hank Willis Thomas — Co-Founder
Hank (b. 1976 Plainfield, NJ) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY as 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, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Musée du quai Branly, Hong Kong Arts Centre and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art.
His collaborative projects include Question Bridge: Black Males, In Search Of The Truth (The Truth Booth), The Writing on the Wall, and For Freedoms. In 2017, For Freedoms was awarded the ICP Infinity Award for New Media and Online Platform. Thomas is a recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2019), The Guggenheim Fellowship (2018), AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize (2017), Soros Equality Fellowship (2017), Aperture West Book Prize (2008), Renew Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation (2007), and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Award (2006). He is also a member of the Public Design Commission for the City of New York.
In 2019, Thomas unveiled his permanent work “Unity” in Brooklyn, NY. In 2017, “Love Over Rules” permanent neon was unveiled in San Francisco, CA and “All Power to All People” in Opa Locka, FL. Thomas holds a B.F.A. from New York University, New York, NY (1998) and an M.A./M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2004). He received honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, MD and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, Portland, ME in 2017.
Initiatives involved in:
For Freedoms: 2020 Awakening