Tony Cokes: texts. tracks. (not an exhibition) is a discursive and artistic platform presenting the work-in-progress of Tony Cokes at the American Academy in Rome. 

For the third year, the American Academy in Rome marks Black History Month with a program exploring histories of power, memory, and justice, alongside the lived experiences and trajectories of Black bodies across space and time. At the heart of the Academy’s program is a featured event with Tony Cokes (2023 Carla Fendi Foundation Fellow and 2026 Roy Lichtenstein Artist in Residence), one of the most influential voices in contemporary art and media practice. Organized by Johanne Affricot, Curator-at-Large, the event will present a series of modular installations of Cokes’s current and past works, alongside a work-in-progress documentation tracing his long-standing engagement with institutional power, state violence, cultural production, and the representation of race, gender, and identity. Through the sampling and recombination of visual, textual, and musical fragments—including pop music, film footage, journalism, critical theory, and social media—Cokes’s practice interrogates the intersections of politics, culture and power. The event will include reading format intervention by Cokes, and a sound listening section curated by the artist.

Tony Cokes is the Roy Lichtenstein Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome, 2023 Carla Fendi Rome Prize Fellow in Art and Technology, and Professor, Department of Modern Culture and Media (Brown University). 

Biography

Tony Cokes is a visual artist whose video installations and text-based media works probe the ideological formations of popular culture, structural racism, and memory. Beginning in the late 1980s with works like Black Celebration (A Rebellion Against the Commodity), he has employed found images, quotes from cultural theorists and musicians, and rhythmic soundtracks to challenge dominant narratives and demand critical engagement. His methods combine archival footage, typography, and music to reveal how media shapes collective perception and amplifies power structures. 

A professor in Brown University’s Department of Modern Culture and Media since 1993, Cokes directs undergraduate studies and has served as interim chair of the department. In 2024 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, which supports his ongoing interdisciplinary media practice. Recent presentations of his work took place at Dia Bridgehampton and the Hessel Museum of Art. Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein will open a solo exhibition, Tony Cokes: Works & Contexts, in September 2025.