Thelonious Stokes
For Thelonious Stokes, Chicago is more than origin. It is foundation, a source of rhythm, struggle, and resilience that still informs every performance and canvas. Born in 1995, raised by his mother and grandfather alongside his younger brother, his early years oscillated between instability and joyful fragments: fields, gardens, games, and basketball. Out of this mixture came an artist who never settled into one form.
Oil painting arrived through a mentor at sixteen, almost simultaneously with the camera. Thelonious began to use the body as both canvas and choreography. He describes it less as battlefield, more as studio: a site where technique, gesture, and design can be tested. His garments, often white or grey and altered during performance, function as second skins, extensions of the figure that embody other presences.
In public performances across Rome, Paris, and New York, he paints his body black, stages screams, or gestures drawn from dance, religion, and sport. These acts are not designed to disturb, nor to provoke, but to declare presence. When asked about titles, he insists the works are already named, their codes waiting to be transcribed.
Between painting, design, music, and performance, Stokes situates himself in what he calls forward realism: a practice outside schools of thought, guided by intuition and a desire to write new forms of truth.
Where were you born, Thelonious? And what was it like growing up there?
I was born in Chicago, Illinois, Southside in 1995. It was interesting. It was somewhat difficult. I was raised by my mother, along with my younger brother, Satchel. And, you know, jumping from school to school. I never really had a, I did not really have a school that I stayed for, that I stayed, you know, in for too long. Almost every more or less year to four years I was at a different school.
And what do you still carry from that place in your work?
Everything. Chicago is a foundation of my experience in relation to not only diasporic culture and sound, but this heaviness that usually resonates with certain, I would say, African American communities.
And what did you study and were there mentors or encounters that changed your life?
When I was 16, I started studying with a private trainer named Ryan Schultz on the north side of Chicago. He was teaching me how to oil paint. At the same time when I picked up a paintbrush, I also picked up a camera. So performance has always been a part of my, my practice, my application.
Looking back at your childhood and your years, would you say you were happy? And today, does happiness still have a place in your creative process?
I'd say I was happy. I was joyful. I had really wonderful moments growing up. You know, from running around in fields and the gardens in Chicago, you know, feeding bread to the geese with my grandfather and my brother, picking up crab apples and throwing them, playing baseball. You know, I had a love for basketball at an early age. I thought I was going to be an athlete at first.
Is Thelonious Stokes your real name? If not, why did you choose it? And what does it represent for you? Does it have anything to do with Thelonious Monk?
Thelonious Stokes is my real name, yes. I was named after Thelonious Monk, actually.
You define yourself as a painter, designer, performance athlete. What does it mean for you to embody all of these identities? Is your body a medium, a message, or a battlefield?
I like that. I think that the body is a dance studio more than a battlefield or a training center. To apply certain techniques, the body can be built and sculpted, and it's something I really appreciate about the human vessel.
When it comes to painting, design, and performance, those are three things, three limbs, that I just feel like are a part of me. In relation to performance, you have to constantly design narrative, composition, identity. Painting is hand-in-hand with that. And then we're actually speaking about physical garment design. We dress the body in garments.
In your videos, you often appear painted in glossy black, performing gestures that evoke violence, dance, sport, religion. What are you trying to say or ask?
I'm speaking about Adam from Genesis.
In many of your performances, you scream, open your mouth wide, take on expressions that evoke the monstrous or the unsettling. Is that scream about despair, fear, or is it aggression, a way to scare, or claim space?
I like that, claiming space. What language do you think Adam spoke in Genesis? He apparently had to name every animal, so how did he name those?
How important is it for you that the viewer feels discomfort?
It's not important at all to me.
There's a garment that appears often in your work, white, grey, sometimes painted or marked by others. Is it a costume, a mask, a second skin, or something else entirely?
It feels like something that I'm channeling, like an entire being that has become a part of me, that manifests sometimes in the external.
Many of your performances take place in public spaces, from New York to Rome to Paris. What drives you to stage your body in these places? And is it an act of liberation or provocation?
It feels absolutely liberating. I feel like geography is a part of my work, coming from the south side of Chicago and now living in Florence. That feeling of flight, I think, is something that's super important for the artist to constantly maintain.
How do you experience the gaze of others while performing in the street?
I don't notice them, I don't mind it. I do what I have to do and I leave the location.
Why do you often choose highly recognizable, almost tourist-like, urban icons as backdrops?
It's a form of reclamation.
Is it a way to sabotage the visual clichés of the cities?
It's not my intention to sabotage anything, more so to enhance.
Your videos often look like moving self-portraits. Are you the one filming everything or is it someone behind the camera?
Yeah, I usually film everything myself.
Is there choreography involved or does it all come from improvisation?
It's just a movement that manifests itself. I feel like it's a wiping away in relation to containing this form of breaking out of something, which can be considered the body.
What role does music play in your work?
Music is huge in my work. I taught myself how to play the cello in a fairly abstract way. It's something I incorporate in a lot of my performance work.
The titles of your performances are often cryptic. Numbers, initials, fragment codes. Sometimes a few like codes, other times like poetic visions. How do you construct them?
I would say it's a collective conscience that I'm tapping into. Something that I'm not necessarily titling the works myself. I feel like the works are already titled. They already have names. It's just about me writing them down.
Your style challenges boundaries between visual art, dance, theater, fashion, and protest. Do you feel connected to any particular artistic movement or do you feel completely outside of all of that?
The first thing that came to my mind was Dada. That movement was interesting to me. I feel like the abstract expressionist has always been something that I've been around. Even though I do use representation in my work. But I kind of want to do something new. I call it forward realism.
Are these artists, past or present, that you see as guides, obsessions, sources of inspiration? Do you feel part of a lineage or more driven by the desire to exist outside of it?
Again, when it comes to the term I coined, forward realism, excuse me. Yeah, I feel like I'm completely outside of that.
Do you have a gallery that represents you? And if you imagine a solo exhibition of your work, what would it look like?
God is my gallery. And a solo exhibition would probably happen in a museum.
How would you translate the intensity of your performances into an exhibition space? Would it be a silent show or a screaming one?
Let's see.
Interview by ARMANDO BRUNO
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