The MacArthur Foundation has just awarded Tony Cokes, a celebrated video artist and the American Academy in Rome’s 2023 Carla Fendi Rome Prize Fellow in Art and Technology, with a 2024 MacArthur Fellowship. Cokes joins the ranks of exceptional individuals whose research, investigations, and findings have had a profound and positive impact upon the world. Receiving this annual award speaks to the artist’s influence on contemporary media; with it comes a large stipend to support his work over the next five years.
A professor of modern culture and media at Brown University, Cokes has developed a unique artistic practice that recontextualizes historical and cultural moments, offering incisive critiques of how media shapes our perception of the world. His signature style involves frames of appropriated text set against vibrant backgrounds, paired with soundtracks that range from pop music to more jarring compositions. This combination forces viewers to confront the contradictions embedded within the media-saturated environments we navigate daily.
“I remain thrilled about this once in a lifetime achievement,” Cokes told the American Academy. “Being recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship was quite a unique, deeply affecting surprise. I thought it might be too late for me to receive such an award. While I don’t know exactly where it will lead yet, I believe I will make the time in the next five years to figure that part out!”
“We are so proud of Tony, and so happy for him,” said AAR President Peter N. Miller. This kind of outstanding creativity is what the American Academy in Rome stands for—and has been contributing to the aesthetic and intellectual culture of the United States for the last 130 years.”
Last year in Rome, Cokes spoke about his art and showed recent works at Summer Open Studios. The Academy, renowned for fostering interdisciplinary research and artistic collaboration, provided an environment for Cokes to expand his artistic inquiry, reinforcing his ongoing examination of the intersections between politics, history, and culture.
Cokes joins fifty-three additional Rome Prize Fellows and Residents who have also won MacArthur Foundation Fellowships. The composer Courtney Bryan, our 2020 Samuel Barber Rome Prize Fellow, was named one last year.