Thelonious Stokes

Thelonious Stokes (b.1995, Chicago) is an academically trained oil painter, filmmaker, performance artist and designer based in Florence, Italy. Shaped by his Baptist culture and upbringing around jazz music on the Southside of Chicago, Stokes gravitated towards art at an early age as a means to express himself. Stokes’ work interrogates Western art history and Judeo-Christian themes – challenging and recontextualizing the canon to include themes and depictions of Black figuration that have been historically omitted. Writer and curator Antoine J. Girard says of Stokes’ practice: “[his] work anchors itself in the figurative movement as an attempt to compensate for the centuries of missing Black representations in the arts.” Thelonious currently works and lives in Florence, Italy, and serves as Founder of The Black Academy of Art.

HOW DOES YOUR SUBMITTED WORK RESPOND TO THE CIRCA 20:25 MANIFESTO?
The mark begins in stillness.
In the pause before gesture.
The space around the canvas carries as much weight as pigment.
This is performance—
not for display, but for invocation.

Redefining negative space
isn’t about absence.
It’s presence in waiting.
It’s the echo of what was refused,
what was held,
what never needed permission to exist.

My body moves with the material—
linen, earth, ash, steel.
Every medium speaks,
but the silence speaks first.

The return of the Chinook
reads like choreography—
a movement traced across generations.
Not a beginning,
but a remembering.
The river becomes the archive.
The current becomes the line.

In painting, in performance,
in life—
space isn’t what’s left over.
It’s what frames the meaning.
The unspoken, the unpainted,
leads the way.

Monk played through the rests.
Basquiat cut through the noise with scripture.
Kiefer built monuments from ruin.
Miles shaped time by subtraction.

Their practice lives in the negative.
So does mine.

A canvas without overload—
a gesture with gravity—
lets what’s essential rise.

In this kind of work,
the wall becomes an organ,
the floor a stage,
the air a collaborator.

Nothing is empty.
Even the void hums.
Even the pause remembers.

This is where creation begins.
Not in force,
but in listening.

That’s the altar.
That’s the act.

IF AWARDED THE £30,000 CIRCA PRIZE, WHAT 10-MINUTE WORK WOULD YOU CREATE – AND HOW WOULD IT EMBODY THE SPIRIT OF REFUGIA?
I propose a journey to the Seven Wonders of the World, transforming each site into a stage for performances that explore negative space. Rather than only admiring their grandeur, I will activate the voids around them, honoring silences, forgotten histories, and unseen bodies. Using my sculptural vessel that evolves with the local landscape, each performance becomes a dialogue of presence and absence. This vessel acts as container and collaborator, shaping a new language with each Wonder. The project, both pilgrimage and improvisation, will culminate in visual works, writings, and a filmic archive capturing the vessel’s transformation across these historic thresholds.

FOLLOW THELONIOUS STOKES ON INSTAGRAM

Funding for the CIRCA PRIZE is generated entirely by the #CIRCAECONOMY, a circular model that reinvests proceeds from affordable art sold on CIRCA.ART into new public art commissions, charitable causes, art education and prizes. Since launching in 2020, the initiative has raised over £1 Million, placing artists and communities at the centre of an economy that continually reinvests in the future of art and culture.

The CIRCA PRIZE 2025 winners will be revealed LIVE in Piccadilly Circus on Monday 13 October, with a special 30-minute award ceremony starting at 20:00 BST. Don’t miss it!