Tony Cokes

Tony Cokes makes politically resonant works in a visual language all his own. Since the 1980s, his work has surfaced the latent ideologies of popular culture, confronting issues of structural racism, power, visibility, and the defiant pleasures still found under capitalism. Cokes samples and remixes fragments of our media landscape to subvert its governing codes. His tightly choreographed video essays layer found text over vibrant colors and dissonant soundtracks, exploiting the gaps between sensory regimes to heighten and complicate the reading experience. Quoted passages from current events or critical theory take on a new tenor when set to music, resulting in propulsive animations that appeal to the mind and body alike. Cokes’s immersive works make text feel visceral and let rhythm spur new insight: as his art attests, “it is possible to dance and think at the same time.”

Tony Cokes lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he serves as Professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. Cokes was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2024 and the Rome Prize in 2022–23. A solo presentation of his work, Texts, Tracks, Talks (1992-2026), will open at The Institute of Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, on September 18, 2026. Other recent solo exhibitions include Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz (2025–26); Batalha Centro de Cinema, Porto (2024–25); Dia Bridgehampton, The Dan Flavin Art Institute, Bridgehampton, New York (2023–24); Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York (2024); De Balie, Amsterdam (2022); Haus der Kunst and Kunstverein in Munich (2022); Greene Naftali, New York (2022, 2018); Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester (2021); MACRO Contemporary Art Museum, Rome (2021); 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, Zurich (2019); Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London (2019); The Shed, New York (2019); Kunsthall Bergen, Norway (2018); and REDCAT, Los Angeles (2012).