Who is viral artist Thelonious Stokes?

As an artist, Thelonious Stokes has managed to anger, confuse, delight and inspire in 30 seconds or less.

In brief Instagram videos that are his response to hundreds of years of white-dominated Western art, he turns heads at the British Museum in London; draws stares at the Louvre Pyramid in Paris; and diverts attention from Michelangelo’s David at Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence. With gold teeth in his mouth and black paint covering his face and chest, the Chicago native hisses, laughs and cries in front of the camera. A musical track of Stokes playing the same pattern of notes on cello accompanies each video.

Now living in Italy, Stokes, 30, recently returned to Chicago for a fresh series of videos. One was filmed in December in front of the Trump Tower downtown, where he stood in the median dividing East Wacker Drive. He also visited O Block, the 6400 block of South Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, a South Side area made infamous by rappers such as Chief Keef and known as Chicago’s most violent block. There, he performed at Parkway Gardens apartment complex as residents looked on.

“I’m bridging the gap that we see in this classist hierarchy within the art world,” said Stokes, who is Black, and a graduate of the Florence Academy of Art. “It’s my goal to equalize the scene. Just as I’d do a piece in the Loop or in front of the Eiffel Tower or in Tokyo — I would treat O Block just the same.”

Like other artists of his generation, Stokes is using social media to reach global audiences, while incorporating their commentary in his work. Since July, his videos have garnered millions of views.

He has documented the performance series in a forthcoming book, “Death,” which features photos, journal entries, sketches, to-do lists and screenshots of social media comments. (The company DashBook will publish his work if enough pre-orders are received by the end of a crowdfunding campaign.) He will also show his videos in an exhibit in Australia in 2027.

A trained oil painter who incorporates Black figures into Biblical scenes, Stokes’ work challenges the canon of Western art and Judeo-Christian representation. With his performances, he said he is “disrupting” historically white art spaces and other well-known sites by emphasizing and elevating Blackness. He also hopes viewers will question why Blackness is associated with negativity, and contemplate the history of blackface minstrelsy and other racist portrayals of Black people in entertainment.

“Everything I was releasing was going viral over the summer because people aren't necessarily used to this specific practice, but almost everybody has seen it before,” he said. “It’s like this buried, subconscious memory that almost every Black person has experienced. We know it existed, but we want to forget about it. And I think it's dangerous to forget about some of these histories.”

As part of his performance practice, Stokes pushes back on the idea of Blackness as an identity.

“The character that performs and disrupts monuments is death,” he said. “He is a state or condition parallel to Blackness, a resurrected soul with no bounds of time or space. Blackness, or death, is a non-tangible object that can assume any form or role, i.e, pain, music, joy, philosophy, etc.”

That concept inspired the title of his book, he said.

Stokes is part of a tradition of Black artists who have used similar imagery to embrace or interrogate Blackness, and to confront or subvert stereotypes, according to Danny Dunson, director of curatorial affairs and arts education at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center.

Stokes’ work recalls the chromatic Black figures in the pieces of Chicago-based artist Kerry James Marshall. It may also evoke Black vaudeville artists forced to perform in blackface, Caribbean people painting their bodies in black during Carnival or New Orleans residents wearing blackface during Mardi Gras.

“I see a lot of history and theory and cultural practice behind what is being shown,” Dunson said.

Stokes said he was inspired to paint his skin black after reflecting on the Biblical account of the creation of man from dust or soil. And he wants to highlight the “so-called urban” image of a Black man with gold teeth in the fine art world.

“It is my goal to insert Blackness at the highest level,” he said. “This image can literally have functionality in a museum next to any given artifact or antique.” 

Historically, Black representation at European art institutions and in art history has been limited. The white, marble Renaissance statues in the background of Stokes’ videos represent a “paragon of white supremacy,” according to Rebecca Zorach, an art history professor at Northwestern University. And when Africans were depicted in art, their images reflected their subjugation.

“People were being collected for their appearance and put into roles in the [royal] court,” Zorach said. “And sometimes those folks were represented in paintings — usually in subservient roles. That’s something that art historians have been trying to bring to light.”

Additionally, the contributions of African artists in Europe may have been suppressed, she said.

Beyond “undermining Eurocentrism,” Stokes’ work “picks at scabs,” said Eddie Chambers, an art history professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

“It's work that unsettles,” he said. “We can look at the over-determined darkness of skin as a rebuttal or challenge to colorism. There's something about very dark-skinned people that makes people uncomfortable.”

That discomfort permeates the social media comments under Stokes’ videos, many of which include racial slurs. Stokes especially wanted to highlight the latter in his book.

“It’s extremely violent and it needs to be seen,” he said.

Responses from Black viewers vary, he said.

“Some people are socially aroused by it and look at my work as a form of activism, while others look at it like I'm vandalizing Black identity,” he said.

But when he visited in December to film his video, people on O Block understood the performance immediately, Stokes said. He said he felt empowered in the neighborhood. Residents knew of him and identified a key goal of his work: to express the full spectrum of emotion that is often repressed.

“Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, everybody I know has some rage in them that might not be verbalized, because sometimes it feels like we're afraid to verbalize it,” Stokes said.

“Sometimes we want to stay quiet because we don't want to bother or take up any emotional space. Sometimes, as a Black person, you’ve even got to shield your excitement because you don't want to mess any opportunities up.”

Danny Dunson said he was glad that Stokes was doing local performances, which could be interpreted as a response to oppression still prevalent in the city.

“Young artists here need to experience what their work does in their lived environment,” Dunson said. “I think it's really important that he is doing this work here.”