Hank Willis Thomas

Peace and Freedom, 2014

These enlarged advocacy buttons are based on a collection of political buttons worn in the support of parties, movements and ideologies that span the past fifty years. This work is a continuation of Thomas’s exploration of signs, and the way images are designed to convey meaning in popular culture. Thomas is also playing with the value of

the collectible, and shifting the meaning of the sign by translating the images found on the original buttons into a collectible object

of fine art. The graphics in this exhibition come from coalition and solidarity movements in Southern Africa and South America.

Each of these pins represent a message that was potent for its original wearers and transfers the meaning and method of identifying or aligning oneself with political values. These are values that are sometimes near, and sometimes far off, geographically, temporally, culturally or economically.