• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Tony Cokes

Let Yourself Be Free
Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein

“I like it when my work […] appears simple so that it can be complex in another way.”—Tony Cokes

For over three decades, the media artist Tony Cokes (b. Richmond, Va., 1956; lives and works in Providence, R.I.) has made work that scrutinizes the ideology and affective politics of media and pop culture. Based on a fundamental critique of the representation and visual commodification of African-American communities in film, television, commercials, and music videos, Cokes has developed a singular form of video essay that radically rejects representational imagery. He employs strategies of appropriation that are widely used in music and DJ culture: in a kind of sampling and remixing, the artist arranges material sourced from film and pop music as well as journalistic and philosophical writings and fragments from social media to fashion new narratives. 

The catalogue Let Yourself Be Free is released in conjunction with Tony Cokes’s solo exhibition at Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein. In the exhibition, he engages works from the collection in dialogue. The principle of sampling and mixing also underlies the catalogue. A programmed algorithm makes each copy a singular specimen: the interface in the printing process continually varies images that document Cokes’s video essays at different points in time. With essays by Jordan Carter (Dia Art Foundation) and Christoph Cox (Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School, New York) and an extensive interview with the artist by Letizia Ragaglia (Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein). The experimental catalogue project is produced in collaboration with saxpublishers.