UV PRINTED ON RETROREFLECTIVE VINYL, MOUNTED ON DIBOND
90 X 100 INCHES
COURTESY OF THE NANCY A. NASHER AND DAVID J. HAEMISEGGER COLLECTION
The present work is one of Hank Willis Thomas’s signature retroreflective screenprints where an image is printed on retroreflective vinyl. The result is an image that is only visible as the light bounces directly back at the viewer. Put another way, it creates an image that is revealed only by moving in front of the piece or shining a light directly at the piece.
In this case, the image underlying the rainbow motif is one of Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) speaking at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (August 28, 1963), then the largest demonstration in American history, of which Rustin was the chief organizer. He identified as both Quaker and queer, which distinguished him from many of the other civil rights leaders with church-organizing origins. He crafted a manual and manifesto for protest-goers which provided both march logistics and ethics on peaceful protesting. Rustin’s activism extended to economic injustice, gay rights, and anti-colonialism.
While an integral figure to the success of the Civil Rights Movement, he is lesser known in the collective cultural consciousness because other leaders considered his status as an openly gay man to be less acceptable to the mainstream.
The title, “When an individual is protesting society’s refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him,” is a quote from Rustin later in life.
