Tony Cokes


Tony Cokes is an American visual artist.

Early life and education

Cokes was born in Richmond, Virginia. He studied photography and creative writing at Goddard College, and received an MFA in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1985.

Art career

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, Malcolm X, Public Enemy, and William Burroughs.

Teaching

Cokes now teaches at Brown University and lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.

Exhibitions

Cokes work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Long Beach Museum of Art, 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.