Tony Cokes was born on 1956 and is an American visual artist and educator.
16 Facts About Tony Cokes
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Tony Cokes studied photography and creative writing at Goddard College, and received an MFA degree in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University.
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In 1995, Renee Cox, Fo Wilson, and Tony Cokes created the Negro Art Collective to fight cultural misrepresentations about Black Americans.
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Tony Cokes is known to combine quotes from a range of texts from critical theory, cultural studies, art criticism, and news reports.
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Tony Cokes's sources include Louis Althusser, Malcolm X, Public Enemy, and William Burroughs.
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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.
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Tony 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.
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Tony Cokes has said he is fascinated by the problem of how violence is represented when people not the state enact it.
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Tony Cokes' art is disturbing, haunting and capable of getting the viewer to question what they think they know.
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Tony Cokes's 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.
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Tony Cokes teaches at Brown University and lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.
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Tony Cokes offered a virtual artist lecture at his alma mater, Virginia Commonwealth University on March 4,2021.
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Tony 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.
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Tony Cokes was included in the 10th Berlin Biennale, and has shown at the Hessel Museum, Whitechapel Gallery, ZKM Karlsruhe, and Goldsmiths Center for Contemporary Art.
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Tony Cokes is represented by Greene Naftali Gallery in New York.
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Tony Cokes was included in a 2019 exhibition at The Shed.