CARLA FENDI ROME PRIZE 2023
TO TONY COKES
The first edition of the Carla Fendi Rome Prize in Art and Technology (2022–2023) was awarded to American artist Tony Cokes. Selected jointly by the American Academy in Rome and the Carla Fendi Foundation, Cokes was granted a fellowship held at the Academy from 13 February to 14 July 2023. Cokes lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he is Professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. His works are held in major international collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.
Cokes’s project, The Daily Practice of Representation: The Artist and the Studio, was inspired by Gerhard Richter’s book The Daily Practice of Painting. The artist developed a series of written texts and video installations that critically reflect on the visual and textual representations associated with the figure of the artist — his activities, spatial contexts, and their related ideological effects.
“Why does artistic practice carry with it particular desires, codes, and expectations regarding space, and what do these notions imply for creative practices as social and political phenomena?” Cokes asks. “For example, how has the artist’s live/work loft become a lifestyle model for urban dwellers, including those who are not professional creatives?.”
