Tony Cokes: So to Speak
February 10 - February 19, 2023




Frieze Projects: Against the Edge presents three works by Tony Cokes. Cokes’ work traverses social and cultural mourning, the effects of racism and displacement, of mass terror, and the cultural output that seeks to rectify or resolve the traumas we inflict on one another. His visual and sonic essays don’t show images other than text, and yet they reference the images that live in our everyday. There couldn’t be a work more fitting to reflect on the current situation of the “Venice of America” than Cokes’s removed but incisive visual essays that works through the traumas of displacement within the multiplicitous histories of a post-terror America. Their musicality and rhythm, and their connection to vernacular forms of music and spoken word mirror Beyond Baroque’s context in Venice, and the organization’s commitment to the literary arts. Curated by Jay Ezra Nayssan and Del Vaz Projects, and presented by Frieze Projects in conjunction with Frieze LA.