Art & Culture

Meet Thelonious Stokes, The Performance Artist Painting Blackness Across the World

BYDaniel Victor Louis

June 4, 2026

Odds are that you’ve already stumbled across one of his viral performances online. The premise is quite simple and straightforward by nature: covered head-to-toe in black paint, Thelonious Stokes stands before some of the world’s most recognizable landmarks, staring directly into the camera while cycling through a series of intense grimaces, expressions, and gestures that are difficult to not feel intrigued by at best, and at worst, to ignore.

Born and raised on Chicago’s South Side and now based in Florence, Italy, Stokes is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice sits somewhere between performance, painting, film, and social intervention. One of the first African American graduates of the Florence Academy of Art, the 30-year-old was initially trained in classical oil painting before expanding his work far beyond the confines of the canvas. Since then, his performances have unfolded in front of Michelangelo’s David, the Louvre, the British Museum, Buckingham Palace, the Eiffel Tower, and, most recently, the Pyramids of Giza.

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Une publication partagée par Thelonious Stokes (@thelonious_art)

With Egypt marking the latest stop in an ever-growing list of performances around the world, we took the opportunity to sit down with Stokes and talk about who he is, how he arrived at this singular practice, and what he hopes to leave behind long after the paint washes off.

For those who don’t know you yet, how would you describe what you do?

THELONIOUS STOKES: I’m a multidisciplinary performance athlete. I like to highlight the performance and the athletic aspect of what I do because my body is more or less a huge part of my day to day practice. Sometimes I call my body my studio.

You’re academically trained as an oil painter and filmmaker. How did performance art enter the picture?

TS: It’s actually always been a direct part of my practice since my early days in painting. You’re always looking at a reflection of you and how you’re responding to it. So self-portraiture was huge, and in that, thinking about some of the historical motifs I grew up with, that even sometimes traumatized me, starting from the struggle of black and brown people, the mockery around them, and seeing blackface for the first time.

You made history as one of the first to graduate from the Florence Academy of Art, and now you live and work in Florence. What pulled you there?

TS: We give the West so much credibility, and as a result, I felt as a young painter that to be the best, I had to travel to Europe to get certified as an artist. And then, when I felt like I’d received the information I needed, I didn’t really want to go back to Chicago. I found myself in Italy figuring out what was next. I started painting a lot of biblical scenes, representing the individuals from the Old or New Testament with black or brown skin. And that just grew into this strive to explore Blackness as a condition or a concept. It has a magnetic force to it. Next thing you know, I’m in London, then I blink a couple times and I’m in Paris, Tokyo, and now Cairo.

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Une publication partagée par Thelonious Stokes (@thelonious_art)

You’ve performed at the Louvre, the British Museum, the Galleria dell’Accademia in front of Michelangelo’s David. Which one hit you the most?

TS: I don’t necessarily favor one more than another, but I’ll speak about the Galleria dell’Academia one. It was one of the shortest performances. I had to kind of sneak into the museum because who’s going to let a man painted in black with a camera start laughing in front of [Michelangelo’s] David? I actually painted myself next to it. Nobody saw me. It felt like a protest in front of what we’d consider almost an icon. To stand in front of it and almost disrupt it, not to stain it in any way, but to take its space. That felt very empowering.

It reminds me of Banksy, in a way. The way you get in and get out.

TS: That’s the first time I’ve been compared to Banksy. I never thought of it like that. But yeah, I can see the vibration between that level of in and out movement.

Tell me about the pyramids. What was that day actually like?

TS: The day of any given performance always feels a little intense, because what I’m doing is more or less disrupting a space. I’m making movements your standard civilian is not making. I’m painted completely black, the volume might be turned up. We’re always prepared for something to potentially go wrong. We usually scout the location a day before, look at the temperament of the people, the cultural significance, and the religious context. We have to be aware of that aura. With the pyramids, we knew our spot, we got there, but I wasn’t feeling rooted. Applying the paint was a very nervous moment. Next thing you know, somebody says, “Look out for the police,” and a police officer starts approaching us. I didn’t even have the paint fully on. We ended up giving him some money. Every moment is specific. I shot the performance, but I wasn’t comfortable, I wasn’t satisfied. Another police officer came. We had to give him more money. The man who provided our horses started getting agitated. Push comes to shove, I was like, “Yo, F— this. I need to shoot this performance.” I covered myself, locked the camera on the sticks, and shot it. The emotional output was right. And then we had to get out of there quickly. Next thing you know, I’m running away on a horse with police on camels behind us.

It probably helped the performance.

TS: It did. The intensity was important.

What about everyone else around you in the moment? Do reactions ever phase you?

TS: People do what they will. There are moments where I feel super invisible, like nobody really notices. Sometimes it feels transactional. If somebody feels they can get something from me, the beauty of what I’m doing or money, they’ll approach. Other than that, I feel invisible for the most part. People step back and they let me express the emotion. Then they become part of the performance themselves. If it’s a crowd, if it’s a marching band, if it’s pure silence, I want to respond to that. I’m grateful for every terrain.

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Une publication partagée par Thelonious Stokes (@thelonious_art)

Your work directly confronts the canon of Western art and the history of blackface minstrelsy. Do you consider it political?

TS: I didn’t necessarily want to consider it something political. But politics are stained on the surface of your skin the day you’re born. We immediately associate certain groups with being a certain way just based on how they look. So I didn’t want to claim my work as political. But unfortunately, it’s been associated with that, whether I like it or not.

The use of silence in your videos is striking, but so is the screaming, the hissing, the crying. What are you trying to release?

TS: The pain of the people, to be honest with you. It feels beyond me. People feel like this, and sometimes we don’t have the space to let it all out. Laughing is joy, the crying is the darkness, the hissing is more about “Be aware I’m here. Get away.”

There’s something else I’ve noticed in the more recent videos. You’ve been finishing the application of the paint inside the frame.

TS: I’m acknowledging the separation between identity and association. We associate a very fundamental visual response to Blackness. “Oh, that’s Black.” But think about how much we load into that one word. Histories, thousands of ethnic groups, war, joy, music, philosophy. From applying what is technically black paint to my skin, I’m not parallel to what I identify as. I want people to be able to separate the Black paint and the human underneath, and understand they’re two different vessels. They can function as a unit, sure. But we use this to hurt people.

I have respect for histories, religious context, and having a certain pride in your heritage. If you grow up Egyptian, Nigerian, Black, Italian, or from Chicago, I want you to feel proud of that. But I also want you to know it could be used as a weapon against you as well. It’s a perceived limitation. I don’t necessarily feel like an American all the time. When I’m in America, Black people are an isolated group living in a very specific condition. But over here in Cairo, I’m seeing Blackness everywhere. That’s why I’m feeling so cool and calm here. This non-tangible concept we call Blackness constantly shifts all around the world.

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Une publication partagée par Thelonious Stokes (@thelonious_art)

Chance the Rapper has championed your work for a long time. What does that kind of support mean?

TS: When I look back on everything, it just feels like a part of art history, culture history, and music history. I’m grateful to be associated with certain dialogues, especially with Black artistry at the highest level.

Tell me about the Black Academy of Art, your own academy.

TS: I opened it last year. I opened the doors of my studio really to just teach. I love to spread certain concepts, as well as oil painting fundamentals, so people can try expressing this level of thought too. The Black Academy of Art right now is a school of thought. Again, we associate Blackness to an ethnic group, when really Blackness is just a condition. It’s a state of being. My goal is to teach underrepresented people how to draw, paint, and activate performance art.

What’s next?

TS: I want to start touring more and composing sound for people. In New York, I played the harp for the first time. So many people came that not everyone could view the performance from where they were standing. I want to extend the dialogue on Blackness through sound, as grand as possible, and being an inspiration to individuals globally. That’s where I’m going.

Lead picture courtesy of Selim Mekkawy

Meet Thelonious Stokes, The Performance Artist Painting Blackness Across the World

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Meet Thelonious Stokes, The Performance Artist Painting Blackness Across the World

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