Hank Willis Thomas: High Visibility

Hank Willis Thomas: High Visibility

AUGUST 25th – DECEMBER 2nd, 2026

Conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976) addresses themes of race, identity, history, and mass media through his multidisciplinary practice. For over a decade, Thomas has worked with retroreflective vinyl, the material used to make highway and street signs, to illuminate histories past and present. When light hits the surface of this medium, it is reflected back toward the source, like car headlights striking a traffic sign. 

Thomas’s retroreflective works contain two distinct images. Under normal ambient lighting, these works depict fragmented or abstract imagery, references to key artists such as Romare Bearden and Ellsworth Kelly, and even a TV color bar test pattern. However, when visitors take a flash photograph with their phone or shine a light directly on the artwork, archival and contemporary photographs of protests appear. The viewer actively participates in the interpretation of the work, adopting the role of a researcher uncovering layers of history. The reflective surfaces serve as a reminder of the importance of both visibility and the presence of multiple perspectives.

This exhibition is presented in tandem with Flash Point: The Civil Rights Photography of Danny Lyon, on view from September 17, 2026, to January 3, 2027, at Reynolda House Museum of American Art.