WASHINGTON, September 18, 2026 – An immense Afro pick in the form of a fist looms in Philadelphia, both monument and statement. It’s hard not to see that through All Power to All People, Hank Willis Thomas doesn’t have any interest in art as a form of decoration.
Hank Willis Thomas, an artist with socially and civically engaged conceptual work focusing on race, identity, history, and public memory, has been nominated to the 2026 TIME100 Art list.
His work frequently starts with well-known visual language such as advertising, pop culture, politics, media images, and then turns it all upside down. What appears familiar becomes uncomfortable on the second look. And this is exactly what Thomas wants to happen. He wants people to reflect on representation, erasure, and creation of national mythologies.
Public art makes the question public. Thomas has done notable public art projects, such as “The Embrace,” a huge bronze sculpture dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King located on Boston Common, and large-scale works in downtown Brooklyn. There, the interaction with art is much less controlled than it would be in the confines of a museum gallery. People commuting, touring, or studying- people who have no intention to see art at all- may suddenly find themselves face-to-face with a piece of art.
It’s a crucial element of his approach. Museums provide context, wall descriptions, and a specifically prepared audience. A civic square provides a lot of things like traffic, weather conditions, hasty steps, and occasionally some people wondering why the Afro pick turned into a monument. Art, in other words, must justify itself with no quiet rooms and a prepared audience.
Thomas’ reach goes far beyond the scope of sculptures. In 2016, he co-founded For Freedoms, an artist-run organization that placed over 500 billboards designed by artists around the United States encouraging civic participation, voting, and engagement with communities.
In challenging this paradigm of nuance vs. persuasion in political art, the initiative shows how one can send a clear message through a billboard while also leaving plenty of room for interpretation. Its installation occurs within the context of traffic information, advertisement, and campaign slogans – all the usual elements of democracy.
Thomas also uses the format of monuments as a way to address histories that had been sanitized or overlooked by institutions. On October 18th, the artist debuted his monument to the enslaved workers who built Davidson College in North Carolina, titled “With These Hands.” Monuments are never simple acts of remembering but a means of questioning whose history gets highlighted.
That work can make audiences uncomfortable, which often serves as a necessary catalyst for deeper dialogue. Public memory should not be a polished brochure.
“The road to progress is always under construction,” Thomas noted in an interview with TIME, adding, “We’re trying to not go back.” The remark captures the ongoing tension running through his practice: progress is possible, but never automatic. A monument can honor resilience while simultaneously exposing the history that made resilience necessary.
His inclusion on the 2026 TIME100 Art list is therefore more than an individual career milestone. It recognizes an artist who treats public space as a civic arena and visual culture as an ongoing public dialogue.
Thomas doesn’t ask viewers merely to admire an object. He asks them to look again—at the symbols surrounding them, at the stories they inherited, and at the collective responsibilities they may have preferred to leave unexamined.
