Tony Cokes
Curated by Greg de Cuir Jr
about the artist
Tony Cokes (USA) is a pioneering media artist born in Richmond, Virginia in 1956. His innovative, prolific, and influential body of moving image artwork tackles diverse themes and subjects, often connecting contemporary politics with popular culture, mass media, and entertainment, while foregrounding theoretical questions of racial and sexual difference, enunciation, and history. He received a BA in photography and creative writing from Goddard College (1979), and an MFA in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University (1985). He participated in the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1983–84). Cokes has created an extensive body of video artworks since 1988, which have been widely exhibited at festivals, museums and galleries internationally, including The Museum of Modern Art, Stedelijk Museum, Louvre Museum, Walker Art Center, National Black Arts Festival, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Museo Reina Sofia, Media City Film Festival, Centre for Contemporary Art Futura, Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, Whitechapel Gallery, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art Rome, The Kitchen, Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, Austrian Cultural Forum, MoMA PS1, Haus der Kunst, Rockefeller Center, Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, The Shed, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, including the 2002 Whitney Biennial, among others. He has received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (1994), Rockefeller Foundation (1996), the New York Foundation for the Arts (1986, 1991), National Endowment for the Arts (1991, 1992), Creative Capital Foundation (1999), and the Getty Research Institute (2008–2009). He was Ellen Maria Gorrissen Fellow at The American Academy in Berlin (2020–2021). Cokes is represented by Greene Naftali in New York. His work is in public and private collections internationally, including The Studio Museum in Harlem, Centre Pompidou, Hammer Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, Queensland Art Gallery, and Carnegie Museum of Art, among many others. He is Professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.
Ad Vice (1999)
Tony Cokes
Ad Vice Tony Cokes USAdigital7 min1999
Ad Vice consists of a succession of colored projection surfaces with segments of text from the worlds of advertising, sport, and popular culture. These projection surfaces in turn alternate with images of a rock band whose music continuously frames the whole. As regards form and content, the video looks like a commercial, an advertising spot for SWIPE country. The fast changing images, the continual music, and the starting and ending credits refer to it. The viewer is greeted with the words: “welcome to SWIPE country… enjoy the sound… make contact… we’ll bring good things to your life.” But leaning back and enjoying it just doesn’t seem possible. The comfort of fast-changing images and catchy slogans is undermined by probing questions that appear on the projection surface. Do you feel good? Why do you feel so lonely? Am I a stranger in my own world? As confirmation of this undermining effect, some of the questions appear more than once or are of extra large size. Ad Vice forms the question: we all have opinions, the voices of our generation, where do they come from? And in this way, Cokes seems to question the essence of our individual existence. Who or what are you? A product of present-day consumer society? So are you happy with that? Are you really happy? – Anita de Groot
Streaming Details
This film is available to stream globally.
Program Partners
This screening is co-presented with Video Data Bank, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Three Fold Press.
Image credits: all artworks, stills, and portraits courtesy of the artist © Tony Cokes and Video Data Bank, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Special thanks to Emily Martin, Zach Vanes, and Eduardo Sotomayor.
No Sell Out (1995)
Tony Cokes
No Sell Out Tony Cokes USAdigital 6 min 1995
No Sell Out employs desktop video to position images of Malcolm X in tension with commercial culture. It is a result of a series of loaded questions we ask ourselves, and now wish to impose on viewers. Mr. X is the serialized signifier that sparks problematic readings and profits in rap music, “political art,” and fashionable sportswear. Is X the sign of a meaningful difference, or just another hip style thang? Appropriating an MTV-like format to critique and question the capitalist commodification of Malcolm X’s subversive politics, X-PRZ sets computer-manipulated imagery of Malcolm X against advertising logos, archival footage, TV imagery, and a propulsive soundtrack of rock music by R.E.M. and Nine Inch Nails. – Tony Cokes
* This video is credited to X-PRZ under the title: No Sell Out… or i wnt 2 b th ultimate commodity / machine (Malcolm X Pt. 2) by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York.
Streaming Details
This film is available to stream globally.
Program Partners
This screening is co-presented with Video Data Bank, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Three Fold Press.
Image credits: all artworks, stills, and portraits courtesy of the artist © Tony Cokes and Video Data Bank, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Special thanks to Emily Martin, Zach Vanes, and Eduardo Sotomayor.