Tony Cokes
(b. 1956)Tony Cokes makes artworks by combining already existing text, music, and video. Cokes reframes his chosen source materials in different ways: by placing text on top of color backgrounds, by pairing text with music, and by mixing text with found video.
Biography
Born in Richmond, Virginia, Cokes has produced video works since the 1980s. Early in his career, Cokes created videos by interweaving archival footage and texts that he sourced, which he set to soundtracks of different songs. In the 2000s, he began to place texts over colorful backgrounds rather than mixing them with video footage. Cokes picks texts from different sources, including academic theory, criticism, news articles, and public speeches. His chosen texts usually speak to complex dynamics caused by economic and social systems like capitalism and racism. For his music soundtracks, Cokes picks songs from across genres—including electronic, pop, and rock. When paired with language, the tracks invite new, sometimes unexpected connections.
Cokes also creates installations that involve his usual technique of placing text on top of color backgrounds; for these works, texts are printed rather than shown as scrolling video. He incorporates music within the installations, which is played out loud from speakers.
By joining text, color, and sound in unique ways across his video works and installations, Cokes invites audiences to experience his chosen source materials differently. Further, his works prompt viewers to contemplate their relationship with media and how it is consumed. As described by the artist, his practice seeks out “new conditions for reading things we think we understand in the world.”
Cokes received a BA from Goddard College and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. From 1983 to 1984, Cokes participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. His solo exhibitions include presentations at the Hessell Museum of Art, Haus der Kunst and Kunstverein, MACRO Contemporary Art Museum, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, and others. The Studio Museum has presented his work in the exhibitions The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism (1990), Veni Vidi Video I (2003), and From Now: A Collection in Context (2025). The Studio Museum first acquired Cokes’s work in 2019.
Tony Cokes
(b. 1956)Tony Cokes makes artworks by combining already existing text, music, and video. Cokes reframes his chosen source materials in different ways: by placing text on top of color backgrounds, by pairing text with music, and by mixing text with found video.
Evil.13.5 (4 OE), 2022
Biography
Born in Richmond, Virginia, Cokes has produced video works since the 1980s. Early in his career, Cokes created videos by interweaving archival footage and texts that he sourced, which he set to soundtracks of different songs. In the 2000s, he began to place texts over colorful backgrounds rather than mixing them with video footage. Cokes picks texts from different sources, including academic theory, criticism, news articles, and public speeches. His chosen texts usually speak to complex dynamics caused by economic and social systems like capitalism and racism. For his music soundtracks, Cokes picks songs from across genres—including electronic, pop, and rock. When paired with language, the tracks invite new, sometimes unexpected connections.
Cokes also creates installations that involve his usual technique of placing text on top of color backgrounds; for these works, texts are printed rather than shown as scrolling video. He incorporates music within the installations, which is played out loud from speakers.
By joining text, color, and sound in unique ways across his video works and installations, Cokes invites audiences to experience his chosen source materials differently. Further, his works prompt viewers to contemplate their relationship with media and how it is consumed. As described by the artist, his practice seeks out “new conditions for reading things we think we understand in the world.”
Cokes received a BA from Goddard College and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. From 1983 to 1984, Cokes participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. His solo exhibitions include presentations at the Hessell Museum of Art, Haus der Kunst and Kunstverein, MACRO Contemporary Art Museum, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, and others. The Studio Museum has presented his work in the exhibitions The Blues Aesthetic: Black Culture and Modernism (1990), Veni Vidi Video I (2003), and From Now: A Collection in Context (2025). The Studio Museum first acquired Cokes’s work in 2019.