ICONS – Admiration of the Unadmired is Henkes’s most extensive series. She began it over fifteen years ago, initially working directly on books and later on newspaper pages. The series brings overlooked and marginalised individuals into focus, elevating them to the status of icons and drawing the world’s attention to their circumstances. By surrounding their images with gold pigment, Henkes elevates each figure and brings it into focus, distilling it to its visual essence.

The series takes shape through an indirect collaboration between journalists, editors and photographers, whose stories and images, originally intended to inform, are transformed into artistic material. To date, Henkes has created more than 1,200 works within this series.