Tony Cokes (born 1956) is an American visual artist and educator.

Early life and education

Cokes was born in

Richmond, Virginia Richmond ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), U.S. commonwealth of Virginia. Incorporated in 1742, Richmond has been an independent city (United States), independent city since 1871. ...

. He studied photography and creative writing at

Goddard College Goddard College was a Private college, private college with three locations in the United States: Plainfield, Vermont; Port Townsend, Washington; and Seattle. The college offered undergraduate and graduate degree programs. With predecessor ins ...

, and received an MFA degree (1985) in sculpture from

Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is a Public university, public research university in Richmond, Virginia, United States. VCU was founded in 1838 as the medical department of Hampden–Sydney College, becoming the Medical College of Virgin ...

Art career

In 1995,

Renee Cox Renee Cox (born October 16, 1960) is a Jamaican-American artist, photographer, lecturer, political activist and curator. Her work is considered part of the feminist art movement in the United States. Among the best known of her provocative works ...

, Fo Wilson, and Tony Cokes created the Negro Art Collective (NAC) to fight cultural misrepresentations about Black Americans.

Artwork

Cokes's artwork concerns popular culture and mass entertainment. In the 1990s, he was part of the band X-PRZ. His videos often take the form of essays in which Cokes displays fragments of found texts on brightly-colored backgrounds, set to popular music. They are essays with musical accompaniment. He is known to combine quotes from a range of texts from critical theory, cultural studies, art criticism, and news reports. His sources include

Louis Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher who studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser was a long-time member an ...

Malcolm X Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an African American revolutionary, Islam in the United States, Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figur ...

Public Enemy Public Enemy is an American Hip-hop, hip hop group formed in Roosevelt, New York, in 1985 by Chuck D and Flavor Flav. The group rose to prominence for their political messages including subjects such as Racism in the United States, American r ...

, and

William Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist. He is widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and ...

. In 1988 Cokes used newsreel footage of the riots in urban black neighborhoods in the 1960s along with 80s industrial music and text commentary to create ''Black Celebration; a rebellion against the commodity''. Cokes wrote that the intent of the piece was to introduce a reading that will contradict received ideas which characterize those riots as criminal or irrational. He has said he is fascinated by the problem of how violence is represented when people not the state enact it. In this work Cokes juxtaposes the old news reel footage with written commentary from Morrisey,

Guy Debord Guy-Ernest Debord (; ; 28 December 1931 – 30 November 1994) was a French Marxist theorist, philosopher, filmmaker, critic of work, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situat ...

Barbara Kruger Barbara Kruger (born January 26, 1945) is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her visual word art that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative ca ...

, and

Martin Gore Martin Lee Gore (born 23 July 1961) is an English musician and songwriter. He is one of the founding members of the electronic music band Depeche Mode and is the band's main songwriter. He is the band's guitarist and keyboardist, and occasiona ...

. Cokes’ use of text alludes to the constructs of race in America and the economic challenges created by those constructs. One slide features a

quote, “The theft of large refrigerators by people with no electricity or with their electricity cut off is the best image of the lie of affluence transformed into truth in play”. Soon after in the piece the

Skinny Puppy Skinny Puppy was a Canadian electro-industrial band formed in Vancouver in 1982. The group was among the founders of the industrial rock and electro-industrial genres. Initially envisioned as an experimental side-project by cEvin Key (Kevin Crom ...

soundtrack has echoing voices that mirror the empty shells of burned-out buildings. Cokes’ art is disturbing, haunting and capable of getting the viewer to question what they think they know. William S. Smith says in Art In America, “Cokes’ working method enables him to respond to current events while continuing his longstanding investigation of race in popular culture”. Created in 1988 this video maintains a timelessness when viewed in the light of the

Black Lives Matter movement Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that aims to highlight racism, discrimination and racial inequality experienced by black people, and to promote anti-racism. Its primary concerns are police brutalit ...

and the most recent rounds of police perpetrated violence against the Black community. Cokes’ work highlights the dissonance of the media coverage of the ongoing movement for racial justice where protests remain framed as violent flare-ups, despite incidents being statistically few and far between. His work asks the viewer what is valid protest and to show that the line between protest and rioting is not a line at all but a continuum.

Teaching

Cokes teaches at

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

and lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island. Cokes offered a virtual artist lecture at his alma mater, Virginia Commonwealth University on March 4, 2021.

Awards and honors

Cokes was named a 2024

MacArthur Fellow The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and colloquially called the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to typically between 20 and 30 individuals workin ...

Exhibitions

Cokes work has been exhibited at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

, the

Studio Museum in Harlem The Studio Museum in Harlem is an African-American art museum at 144 West 125th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States. Founded in 1968, the museum collects, preserves and interprets art created by African A ...

, the

Long Beach Museum of Art The Long Beach Museum of Art is a museum located on Ocean Boulevard in the Bluff Park neighborhood of Long Beach, California, United States. The museum's permanent collection includes over 4,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures, works on paper, ...

, the Kitchen, and Artists Space. He was included in the 10th Berlin Biennale, and has shown at the Hessel Museum, Whitechapel Gallery, ZKM Karlsruhe, and Goldsmiths Center for Contemporary Art. Cokes is represented by Greene Naftali Gallery in New York. Cokes was included in a 2019 exhibition at The Shed. Recent solo exhibitions include CIRCA, London (2021); Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona (2020); ARGOS center for audiovisual arts, Brussels (2020), Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester (2021).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cokes, Tony 1956 births Living people Virginia Commonwealth University alumni Brown University faculty Artists from Richmond, Virginia Goddard College alumni African-American artists American video artists MacArthur Fellows