TONY COKES
On Boredom

Art Institute of Chicago

October 3, 2026 – March 14, 2027

For his first public outdoor presentation in Chicago, TONY COKES presents a two-part installation on the Art Institute’s Bluhm Family Terrace. The terrace windows facing Millennium Park become a billboard with the phrase "Let yourself be free"- drawn from Aretha Franklin's 1968 recording of "Think"- able to be read from across the street and the park below. The presentation also includes one of Cokes's freestanding signs, reading "We don't have the freedom to be bored anymore," a line from the English cultural theorist Mark Fisher. On the other side, the sign reads: “There’s a set of forces that want us to be permanently anxious.” Together, the texts question the meaning of freedom in the present defined by rapid technological change and the erosion of private life.

Organized by Giampaolo Bianconi, the Dittmer Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

To learn more, visit the Institute's website.