Hank Willis Thomas’ Community Truth Telling

A brilliant red, steel sculpture has found a temporary home in front of NXTHVN’s facade. Shaped in the outline of a thought bubble, Hank Willis Thomas’s 2018 sculpture Josephine and Kazumi (Real Red) is a rectangular outline with rounded edges and a triangular tail that points to the ground. The empty interior of Thomas’s sculpture, which is also a bench, invites audiences to fill in the blank. It’s a place to rest, as well as a call for participation from pedestrians, drivers, and viewers. 

Another prompt awaits viewers inside the gallery where Hank Willis Thomas and Ryan Alexiev’s exhibition the truth is i am you continues through Nov. 20 in the Dixwell art space.

Next to the door, a black, sans serif font instructs viewers, “Please write your truth…” On a small gray pedestal, two containers hold clean and dirty black Sharpie permanent markers. Silver balloons, propelled by several fans, bump and hover around viewers. Repeating the shape of a thought bubble, the balloons share and conceal the messages written by previous visitors. 

Chris Gardner Photos Courtesy of NXTHVN.

From Andy Warhol to Jeff Koons, balloons are an established motif among contemporary artists, especially those with conceptual underpinnings. The Latin etymology of the word “inspiration” means to breathe, informing the apparent bond between the act of breathing and the gathering of new ideas. 

Piero Manzoni, the Italian provocateur most known for canning his own excrement, filled a rubber balloon with his own breath for a sculpture titled Artist’s Breath (1960). Over time, the balloon deflated, and the rubber became brittle. What remains is the sad skin of an empty balloon placed on a wooden base. Without air, inspiration fails. 

Six years later, in Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds (1966), the iconic Pop artist sealed a series of metallic pillowy forms with a mixture of air and helium. This proprietary solution allowed the mysterious balloons to float in mid-air instead of rising to the ceiling or sinking to the floor. The uncanny lift of the balloons, first installed in a New York City gallery, enchanted viewers. They infused the space with a literal figurative sense of buoyancy. 

Chris Gardner Photos Courtesy of NXTHVN.

Similar fun fuels Thomas’s interactive exhibition, which was first displayed in 2007 at the University of California in San Francisco. The silver balloons contain a white thought bubble, outlined in black. They flirt and flutter around the otherwise empty gallery, where phrases from an accompanying poem scroll along the top third of the white walls. Composed by Thomas and Alexiev, the poem is a series of short statements that complete the exhibition prompt: "the truth is i believe you," "the truth is i become you," and "the truth is i judge you," for example. 

While the tone of the poem by Thomas and Alexiev embraces universal maxims, the messages on the balloons scrawled by viewers to the NXTHVN gallery range from intimate confessions to birthday shoutouts, from instructional advice to inane omissions, with everything in between. 

“Help yourself by helping others in life,” states one balloon, drifting near another that reads, “My truth is that I am scared of my own success.” Viewers see themselves in these truths, with parts of their reflections visible on the metallic edge of the balloon and perhaps pieces of their personal truths echoed in the words. 

Chris Gardner Photos Courtesy of NXTHVN.

Around the corner from the gallery is a darkened viewing room for a video of messages answering the same cue. Inside The Truth Booth—an inflatable booth developed by The CAUSE COLLECTIVE that has traveled to Ireland, South Africa, Afghanistan, and the United States—the public spoke their truths to a video camera. From the nondescript white interior of the booth (whose exterior is also shaped like a thought bubble), people shared bombastic sentiments of hope—“I love everyone”—and sad stories of drug abuse and recurrent miscarriages. Some expound their religious beliefs, while more than one child declares their love of Legos. 

the truth is i am you arrives at a time when the truth is contested. In recent years, people have drawn radically different conclusions about our shared reality. Take former President Trump’s assertion of the stolen election, known as the “big lie,” or the efficacy of vaccines for Covid-19. On social media, our appearances are gorgeously groomed, and the versions of our lives that we share slant toward an impossible rosiness. 

Chris Gardner Photos Courtesy of NXTHVN.

At first brush, Thomas’s show emulates this cheerfulness. The exhibition encourages an immediate light-heartedness with its ability to beckon the childhood fun of a balloon chase. The responses—on the balloons in the exhibition and from the video recordings—can be lumped into categories with many messages touching on religion and love, among other enormous topics. Yet as an aggregate, these truths assert an unwieldiness; the perspectives are uncompromisingly personal. The truths clash as the balloons crash into one another in space. 

Outside this show, the mutability of “the truth” can lead it to become weaponized and contorted for fraudulent aims. A single truth does not exist in perpetuity. Still, through its most optimistic reading, Thomas’s exhibition funnels a whirlwind of empathy. Viewers can see glimpses of themselves in many truths, circling us back to the title of the exhibition: the truth is i am you. 

the truth is i am you runs through November 20, 2022 at NXTHVN. NXTHVN  is located at 169 Henry St. in the city's Dixwell neighborhood.