Hank Willis Thomas and For Freedoms Bring ‘Another Justice: US Is Them’ to the Parrish Art Museum
What does justice look like?
“Another Justice: US Is Them,” a new group exhibition at the Parrish Museum in Water Mill, New York, invites viewers to interrogate the answer from various perspectives, including their own. The show, organized by Hank Willis Thomas and artist collective For Freedoms and cocurated by Carly Fisher, opens July 23.
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The exhibition includes work from 12 artists within the wider For Freedoms community, including Muna Malik, Zo? Buckman, Eric Gottesman, Christine Sun Kim, and Kambui Olujimi; plus an offsite component features digital work by four Indigenous artists displayed on the Shinnecock Monuments digital billboards. “All the artists we work with, in their own practices, are in pursuit of different forms of justice and representing that and imagining that,” says Thomas, who cofounded For Freedoms in 2016 along with Gottesman, Michelle Woo, and Wyatt Gallery to drive civic engagement through multimedia art projects. This fall, in collaboration with the Parrish, Thomas and his other collective Wide Awakes will be in residence at the Watermill Center.
Kim, who’s deaf, reimagines the viewer’s relationship to language and communication through her work. Olujimi investigates American legacies of violence through his illustrated series “Redshift,” which speaks to the phenomena of witnessing unseen objects by measuring their force on surrounding entities. It usually applies to distant celestial bodies, but Olujimi uses the term to speak to the mythology of white privilege within American history. “Violence, especially within this country right now, is seen as othered; the threat to the union comes from abroad,” he says. “But part of white privilege is a denial of the violent history, a legacy that America’s founded on and perpetuates even to this day.”
Courtesy the artist
His series includes portraits of American presidential assassinations — he notes that each, successful or not, was carried out by a white man or woman. Olujimi’s most recent additions to “Redshift” for the Parrish exhibition comment on the Jan. 6 insurrection. “There’s nothing more clear to a threat of democracy than agents of democracy undermining it,” he adds.
Thomas doesn’t typically include his own work in exhibits that he’s also curating, but notes that “it was an opportunity to show my work alongside people who inspire it,” he says. “US Is Them” includes several quilted flag pieces from his solo gallery show “Another Justice: Divided We Stand” on view last winter in L.A. Thomas also recently debuted a neon sculpture, “Remember Me,” which is installed on the south-facing exterior of the museum. The artist recreated handwriting from a vintage postcard he came across at the Amistad Center at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Connecticut.
“I’ve been perpetually haunted by it,” says Thomas of the handwritten text — “remember me” — which is scrawled next to a photo of a young Black man wearing a Buffalo Soldier hat, associated with the all-Black army regiment established in the mid-1800s. “I wanted to create an opportunity for people to reflect on how important every life is, especially to the people living it. In some way, shape or form, we all want to be remembered,” adds Thomas. “And in being remembered, we get an extended life.”
Courtesy Pace Gallery
The offsite component of “Another Justice” is an extension of For Freedom’s ongoing nationwide billboard campaign. The collective, in collaboration with the “Land Back” initiative, tapped four Indigenous artists to create pieces for the nearby Shinnecock Monuments. The digital billboards, which flank the Sunrise Highway, were built on Shinnecock sovereign land several years ago as a revenue initiative to support the Nation, located just west of Southampton — and initially received pushback from the NYSDOT and local Hamptons communities.
“All over the country, native people have been finding creative ways to maintain their livelihoods despite diminishing opportunities and resources because of the encroachment of the rest of us,” says Thomas. “And the Shinnecock Monument is an example of another creative form of resistance, and also resilience.”
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For anyone driving out east, the striking 62-foot monuments are impossible to miss: they welcome you into the Hamptons. As part of the Parrish exhibition, the billboards showcase artists Jeremy Dennis, a member of the local Shinnecock Nation, Jeremy Gibson, Koyoltzintli Miranda-Rivadeneira, and Marie Watt.
Dennis’ digital piece, “Return Our Stolen Sacred Shinnecock Hills,” features a photograph taken of Shinnecock Hills, a sacred Shinnecock landsite that is located outside of the tribe’s current territory. Today, it’s the location of a popular golf club.
“This is true for a lot of Indigenous groups and tribal nations: this land, Shinnecock Hills, was stolen from us in such a blatant way that it’s almost unbelievable that it’s still not in our possession,” says Dennis, adding that the tribe has been buying back sacred land (at high market rates) in recent years.
“We’re trying to fight this uphill battle to regain this land that was pretty much stolen from us outright, with no compensation or acknowledgement,” he says. “This piece is going to be shown to people entering this territory; there’s no way you can get to the east end without seeing both the monuments and the message about the Shinnecock Hills. It’s relevant to everyone passing by. And I hope people do a little bit of research.”
Courtesy the Artist and For Freedoms
Launch Gallery: Inside 'Another Justice: Us Is Them' at the Parrish Art Museum
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