Amos Rex ends the summer with a 24-hour retrospective exhibition of Tony Cokes’s video works

For a full 24 hours, starting at 6 am, Cokes’s nearly four-decade-long artistic practice will be presented across the interior and exterior of Amos Rex, Helsinki. The program transforms the museum’s cinema, passageways, facade, and outdoor square into a dynamic arena for screenings, performances, and interventions.  

"We are so excited to be working together with PUBLICS and Tony Cokes on what promises to be an extraordinary curatorial event. The idea to take over the whole area around the museum is something that came naturally in this process and Tony’s extraordinary works will be like a glitch in the system, a new way of seeing this public space and the digital screens that we all live with and pass by every day. We look forward to amusing, entertaining and provoking passers-by and visitors alike in an intense 24-hour period in September", says Museum Director Kieran Long.  

Since the late 1980s, Cokes has redefined media by interweaving textual, musical, and visual elements. Through his distinctive process of cutting, assembling, and rearranging fragments of history—archival footage, news broadcasts, political speeches, pop and club culture, theoretical texts, and conversations—Cokes constructs an incisive critique of media, power and anti-Blackness, as well as consumerism and contemporary political discourse.

"This singular selection of works is a rare opportunity to experience my practice in spatially, temporally, and sonically diverse contexts. The ensemble extends the implications of the work in highly intensive, specific, and productive ways. I can’t wait to feel, see, and hear the results!”, says Tony Cokes.  

Working closely with the artist, the retrospective brings seminal works to Helsinki for the first time, featuring Black Celebration (1988), Fade to Black (1990), and Evil.16 (Torture.Musik) (2009–2011), to more recent works such as HS LST WRDZ (2021), Some Munich Moments 1937–1972 (2022) and Testament E: MF.slow.cancel.2014 (2024), amongst others.

The program includes sloganeering posters, t-shirts and screen-printing workshops using texts, excerpts, and slogans from Cokes’ works, alongside a talk with Tony Cokes, curator and writer Bhavisha Panchia, and Artistic Director of PUBLICS—Paul O’Neill. 

24 hours with Tony Cokes is curated by PUBLICS with Bhavisha Panchia, in collaboration with Amos Rex. The event is free for all.