Special to The Post

When grants were announced earlier this month, it was noted that seven of the 22 fellows were African American. Among them are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit. Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the third in the series highlighting the Black awardees. The report below is excerpted from the MacArthur Fellows web site.

Tony Cokes

Tony Cokes, 68, is a media artist creating video works that recontextualize historical and cultural moments. Cokes’s signature style is deceptively simple: changing frames of text against backgrounds of solid bright colors or images, accompanied by musical soundtracks.

Cokes was born in Richmond, Va., and received a BA in creative writing and photography from Goddard College in 1979 and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1985. He joined the faculty of Brown University in 1993 and is currently a professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media.

According to Wikipedia, Cokes and Renee Cox, and Fo Wilson, created the Negro Art Collective (NAC) in 1995 to fight cultural misrepresentations about Black Americans.^[5]

His work has been exhibited at national and international venues, including Haus Der Kunst and Kunstverein (Munich); Dia Bridgehampton (New York); Memorial Art Gallery University of Rochester; MACRO Contemporary Art Museum (Rome); and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Harvard University), among others.

Like a DJ, he samples and recombines textual, musical, and visual fragments. His source materials include found film footage, pop music, journalism, philosophy texts, and social media. The unexpected juxtapositions in his works highlight the ways in which dominant narratives emerging from our oversaturated media environments reinforce existing power structures.

In his early video piece Black Celebration (A Rebellion Against the Commodity) (1988), Cokes reconsiders the uprisings that took place in Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, and Boston in the 1960s.

He combines documentary footage of the upheavals with samples of texts by the cultural theorist Guy Debord, the artist Barbara Kruger, and the musicians Morrisey and Martin Gore (of Depeche Mode).

Music from industrial rock band Skinny Puppy accompanies the imagery. In this new context, the scenes of unrest take on new possibilities of meaning: the so-called race riots are recast as the frustrated responses of communities that endure poverty perpetuated by structural racism. In his later and ongoing “Evil” series, Cokes responds to the rhetoric of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.”

 Evil.16 (Torture.Musik) (2009–11) features snippets of text from a 2005 article on advanced torture techniques. The text flashes on screens to the rhythm of songs that were used by U.S. troops as a form of torture.

The soundtrack includes Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Britney Spears’s “… Baby One More Time,” songs known to have been played to detainees at deafening decibel levels and on repeated loops. The dissonance between the instantly recognizable, frivolous music and horrifying accounts of torture underscores the ideological tensions within contemporary pop culture.

More recently, in a 2020 work entitled HS LST WRDS, Cokes uses his pared-down aesthetic to examine the current discourse on police violence against Black and Brown individuals. The piece is constructed around the final words of Elijah McClain, who was killed in the custody of Colorado police. Cokes transcribes McClain’s last utterances without vowels and sets them against a monochromatic ground. As in many of Cokes’s works, the text is more than language conveying information and becomes a visualization of terrifying breathlessness. Through his unique melding of artistic practice and media analysis, Cokes shows the discordant ways media color our understanding and demonstrates the artist’s power to bring clarity and nuance to how we see events, people, and histories.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

By Tamara Shiloh

 Lois Mailou Jones was a prominent African American artist whose career spanned more than seven decades, from the Harlem Renaissance to the modern art movement. She was not only a prolific painter but also an influential educator, bridging cultural gaps and challenging stereotypes through her vibrant and diverse works.

Her unique journey of self-expression, dedication to art, and advocacy for African American and African themes made her a crucial figure in the evolution of American art.

Jones was born on Nov. 3, 1905, in Boston. Raised in an intellectual and supportive family, she demonstrated an early interest in art, encouraged by her mother, who believed in the importance of creativity. Lois studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she faced racial challenges but persisted in pursuing her passion.

Her pursuit of higher education led her to the prestigious Design Art School, where she perfected her skills in textile design. Later, Jones attended Harvard University and received further training at the Académie Julian in Paris. This European experience greatly influenced her style and broadened her perspective on art.

Jones’s career began in textile design, creating works that were used by leading textile companies. However, her true passion was painting. During the Harlem Renaissance, she moved away from textile design to focus on fine art, exploring themes that reflected her heritage and the African diaspora.

Her early works were influenced by European Post-Impressionism, featuring landscapes and still life, but Jones’s style evolved over time. After spending time in Haiti, she was deeply inspired by Caribbean culture, and her palette became more vivid, her subject matter more symbolic. The influence of African and Caribbean culture is evident in her later works, where she used bright colors and geometric patterns to convey the spirit and stories of the people she encountered.

Her contributions to African American art were significant during a time when Black artists struggled for recognition. She often focused on themes of African heritage, pride, and unity, blending African illustrations and portraits with Western artistic techniques to create a unique visual language that celebrated Black culture.

She was also a dedicated educator. She began her teaching career at Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina and later became a professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she taught for almost 50 years. Through her teaching, she influenced generations of young Black artists, encouraging them to explore and express their cultural heritage through art.

In the 1930s and 1940s, she worked to exhibit her work alongside other Black artists, helping to create a platform for voices that had long been excluded from mainstream galleries.

Recognition and Legacy

Jones achieved significant recognition throughout her lifetime, both in the United States and internationally. She exhibited her work across the globe, including in Paris, Africa, and the Caribbean.

Jones continued painting until her death in 1998, leaving behind a rich legacy of artistic achievements and contributions to art education. She broke boundaries by celebrating Black identity and heritage at a time when these themes were often marginalized.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

By Tamara Shiloh

Augusta Savage was a prominent sculptor and activist of the Harlem Renaissance, known for her artistic talent and dedication to encouraging and supporting African American artists.

Augusta Christine Fells was born on Feb. 29, 1892, in Green Cove Springs, Fla. She later took the name of her second husband as her

Savage began sculpting as a child using natural clay found near her home. Her father, a Methodist minister, didn’t approve of her sculpting and did whatever he could to stop her. She once said that her father “almost whipped all the art out of me.” Despite her father’s objections, she continued to make sculptures.

When the family moved to West Palm Beach, Fla., in 1915, she encountered a new challenge: a lack of clay. She eventually got some materials from a local potter and created a group of figures that she entered in a local county fair. Her work was well received, winning a prize and along the way the support of the fair’s superintendent, George Graham Currie. He encouraged her to study art despite the racism she encountered.

In the 1920s, Savage moved to New York City, where she attended Cooper Union, a prestigious art school that provided free tuition. She excelled there, completing her studies ahead of time and receiving scholarships for living expenses. Despite being rejected for a summer program in France because of her race, she persevered, using the incident to highlight discrimination. She gained recognition during the Harlem Renaissance, creating sculptures of prominent African Americans, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey.

In 1929, Savage received a Julius Rosenwald fellowship, which enabled her to study in Paris, where she exhibited her work at the Grand Palais, a famous exhibition hall and museum in the French capital.

When she returned to the U.S. during the Great Depression, Savage turned to teaching and founded the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts, mentoring young artists like Jacob Lawrence and Norman Lewis. She played an active role in the Harlem Artists’ Guild and worked with the Works Projects Administration (WPA) to support struggling artists.

One of Savage’s most celebrated works was The Harp, created for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Inspired by James Weldon Johnson’s poem “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the monumental sculpture depicted twelve African American youth as the strings of a harp. Although it was highly acclaimed, The Harp was destroyed after the fair ended.

In her later years, Savage retreated to a quieter life in Saugerties, New York, teaching children and creating art as a hobby. She was married three times and had one child, Irene.

Savage passed away on March 26, 1962, in New York City after battling cancer. Although she was nearly forgotten at the time of her death, today Savage is recognized as a pioneering artist, educator, and advocate for African American art and artists.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post