Hank Willis Thomas will speak next month at MICA as a part of the Spring Mixed Media Speaker Series. The panel discussion, “Monday-Freedoms,” features Hank Willis Thomas, conceptual artist and co-founder of Four Freedoms; Devin Allen, a documentary photographer who rose to national attention after the Baltimore Uprising; and Bilphena Yahwon, a Baltimore-based writer, researcher, organizer and womanist; and is moderated by MICA Curatorial Practice MFA student Tiffany Ward ’20.
The event is a public panel discussion and will be held on Wednesday, March 13 at 7 p.m. in the Fred Lazarus IV Center, 131 W. North Ave.
This past fall, as MICA’s first Creative Citizenship Fellow, Thomas worked with the Curatorial Practice MFA students to develop an exhibition related to his For Freedoms 50 State Initiative. The exhibition Everyday, Everyday, Everyday, Everyday Freedoms, opened Feb. 1, 2019 and reimagines civic engagement beyond voting in elections. The group exhibition considers how a democracy could be free from disenfranchisement; forming a critique of the frayed political climate from a multiplicity of perspectives. Featuring local, national and international artists at all stages of their careers, their artwork frames participation and activism through photography, video, game design, sculpture, installation, data visualization, text and textiles.
Everyday, Everyday, Everyday, Everyday Freedoms runs through March 17 in MICA’s Meyerhoff Gallery, Fox Building, 1303 W. Mount Royal Ave., open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday noon to 5 p.m.
Thomas received a BFA in Photography and Africana Studies from New York University, an MFA/MA in Photography and Visual Criticism from the California College of Arts, and an Honorary Doctorate from MICA. Thomas’s monograph, Pitch Blackness, was published by Aperture. He has exhibited internationally at such venues as the International Center of Photography, New York; Public Art Fund, New York; The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bizkaia, Spain; Studio Museum in Harlem; Musée du Quai Branly, Paris; and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
