Tony Cokes

This recent work from the Evil Series was made during the current pandemic and in the wake of recent episodes of police brutality and systemic violence against Black people across the United States. The video animates a conversation between Tina Campt, Saidiya Hartman, and John Akomfrah, together with a soundtrack by UK producer and DJ Caspa. Employing color, font size and repetition as language, the piece concludes with the words “We have witnessed enough Black death for a lifetime…”.

Tony Cokes (b.1956 Richmond, VA, USA) lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he serves as Professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. Since the 1980s, Cokes has developed a precise visual style marked by animated text, found images, and solid-color slides. His works combine cultural fragments, reframing the images and ideas designed to construct our habits and identities. By extracting source texts from their original contexts and layering elements that often clash, Cokes examines media’s operations and the ways in which it manifests power. Recent solo exhibitions include CIRCA, London (2021); Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona (2020); ARGOS centre for audiovisual arts, Brussels (2020); Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2020); BAK – basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, Netherlands (2020); Luma Westbau, Zürich (2019); Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London (2019); The Shed, New York (2019); Greene Naftali, New York (2018); Kunsthal Bergen, Bergen, Norway (2018); the 10th Berlin Biennale, Berlin (2018); and REDCAT, Los Angeles (2012). His work has been shown in exhibitions around the world and is in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Kunsthallen, Copenhagen; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. His recent publications include If UR Reading This It’s 2 Late: Vol. 1-3 (Goldsmiths, 2019), The Black Banal (Greene Naftali, 2019), and The Vienna Guide (Saxpublishers, 2018).