People Everyday

Exhibition Overview

The Liu Shiming Art Foundation is pleased to present People Everyday, a cross-generational exhibition that brings together the work of Hank Willis Thomas and Liu Shiming. Featuring over 35 works, including sculpture and painting, the exhibition highlights both artists’ shared investment in the human form, caregiving, and community as sites of dignity, memory, and transformation. 

Working across vastly different cultural and temporal contexts, Thomas and Liu each draw attention to “everyday people” as essential agents of social history. Liu’s deeply empathetic sculptures of farmers, mothers, and workers reflect his experience living among rural communities in mid-20th century China. Thomas, in turn, engages archival images and contemporary materials to examine Black identity, resistance, and care in the United States.

Exhibition Highlights

In Thomas’s Icarus in the Sunlight and Icarus in the Moonlight (2024), abstracted limbs gesture skyward in ambiguous states of motion—simultaneously reaching, falling, and striving. These poetic forms mirror Liu’s intimate sculptural studies of strength in motion, including his seminal Cutting Through Mountains to Bring in Water (1958), a heroic depiction of determination against physical and ideological barriers during China’s Great Leap Forward.

Both artists also emphasize gesture as a mode of connection. In Liu’s Fuse (big) (1992), the union of two bodies forms a singular, emotive structure. Similarly, Thomas’s The Embrace (2023) monumentalizes the entwined arms of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, offering a symbol of love and resistance through the body’s most human expressions.

“Whether sculpting rural mothers, boatmen, or intertwined hands, both Liu and Thomas reject the glorification of the powerful. Instead, they elevate those who carry, cradle, walk, and row—those whose quiet or bold gestures sustain the world.”— Emann Odufu, Curator

Public Events

1. Join us for the opening reception of "People Everyday" on Tuesday, May 27 at 6 PM at the Liu Shiming Art Gallery.

2. A conversation between artist Hank Willis Thomas and curator Emann Odufu, moderated by editor and Foundation board member Andrew Serwer, will take place on June 16, 2025. Further details and registration information to follow.

About the Artists

Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976, Plainfield, NJ) is a conceptual artist whose work addresses identity, perspective, media, and the construction of collective memory. His practice spans photography, sculpture, installation, and public art, often incorporating archival imagery and retroreflective materials to activate audience participation. Thomas is the co-founder of For Freedoms, a national platform for civic engagement through art.

Liu Shiming (1926–2010) was a pioneering figure in Chinese sculpture. A graduate of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Liu’s work blends traditional Chinese aesthetics with modernist influences. He is celebrated for his intimate portrayals of rural life and his distinctive "Chinese Method," which emphasizes narrative and cultural grounding. His works are housed in institutions across Asia, North America, and Europe. In 2018, the Liu Shiming Sculpture Museum was established at CAFA.