Francis Alÿs

Children’s Game #39: Parol (2023)

First we drive past harrowing scenes of missile and bullet damage, into an area that's still intact. At a crossroads not far from the frontline, three boys in fatigues, with wooden guns, act out a grown-up duty: to uncover Russian spies. The drivers, both ...

Children’s Game #38: Ellsakat (2023)

Neither indoors nor out, but on the doorstep, where you might play a quick game while waiting for someone. Girl and boy pile up candy wrappers, face down; elsewhere, for the game is widespread, it could be cards, tokens, any flimsy object with a front and ...

Children’s Game #36: Kujunkuluka (2022)

Many of us played this as kids, spinning on the spot until collapsing. In a group there's a competitive element, each tries to be the last one still upright; but it's only, always, about inner sensation. A crazy, soaring dizziness, a drugless altered state ...

Children’s Game #35: Kluddermor (2022)

Children getting into a frightful mess that only parents could sort out: this familiar scenario plays out subversively, for the rescuing 'Mother' is just a child. A circle turns into a knot as the kids entangle themselves, still clutching, ever more twiste ...

Children’s Game #34: Appelsindans (2022)

Each couple tries to save an orange from gravity. When it falls, the pair is eliminated. This exercise in collaboration involves intimacy: faces are only an orange apart. It involves embraces, though not loving so much as keeping the partner in tension. Pa ...

Children’s Game #32: Estrellas (2022)

Why do all the bottle tops start the same way up, grouped together, if there are two teams? When is the ball launched with a plank and when by hand? Why sometimes way overhead and sometimes to the body? When can you turn the tops over? Is it like the runs ...

Children’s Game #22: Jump Rope (2022)

Stark though it is, the roof terrace with its low ochre-red wall and washed turquoise abstract seems the nearest thing to a garden among the forbidding cliffs of mass housing that rear up all around. Like bold tendrils of organic life, three young girls ap ...

Children’s Game #31: Slakken (2021)

Snail racing is a game of unequal chances, especially when your snails are not trained champions, but randomly plucked off a wall; individual temperaments and moods count as in any sport. They are supposed to radiate out towards a circular finishing line, ...

Children’s Game #30: Imbu (2021)

Though mosquitoes have almost as many sensory auditory cells as we do, their hearing is for the sole purpose of finding a mate. Individual males (more wingbeats per second, higher frequency) and females (slower, lower) adjust their flight tones until a ple ...

Children’s Game #29: La roue (2021)

Over the city of Lubumbashi looms the mampala or slag heap of the Étoile du Congo cobalt mine, its lower slopes today sifted by the clandestins, lithium hunters who risk their lives to feed our global battery market. The film rests on dramatic contrasts â ...

Children’s Game #28: Nzango (2021)

Born in the recent past in school playgrounds and now a national sport, Nzango is a female-only game. The aim is to imitate, or more mysteriously, anticipate, the leg movements of the facing player. The pace is set by both teams singing and clapping in uni ...

Children’s Game #26: Kisolo (2021)

Kisolo is one of a thousand variants of the global Ur-game, Mancala, a "sowing" game sometimes still played with seeds even when using a board. Its timeless agrarian gestuary follows the combinatorial rules of what is also a "count and capture" game. After ...

Sandlines, the Story of History (2020)

The children of a mountain village near Mosul re-enact a century of Iraqi history, from the secret Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916 to the realm of terror imposed by the Islamic State in 2016. The children revisit their past to understand their present. ...

Children's Game #23: Step On A Crack (2020)

A sprite in a blue pinafore, plimsolls, and white facemask flits through Hong Kong, enclosed in a quicksilver bubble of magic. Streets become the dull, slow backdrop to her vividness. Oblivious to storefronts and curious stares, seeing only the yellow line ...

Children’s Game #21: Hand Stack (2019)

Children’s Game #20: Leapfrog (2018)

Children’s Game #18: Knucklebones (2017)

Knucklebones, or jacks, has existed for more than 2000 years and was first played with the astralagus bones of a sheep. This version –played with stones by two girls seated on the landing of a concrete stairway, people's legs and occasional monkeys passi ...

Children’s Game #17: Chunggi (2017)

Reminiscent of male football tricks where a ball is juggled frontally off the knee or foot, Chunggi, popular among Nepalese girls, appears a lot more difficult. It involves a light bundle of leaves, as green and gathered as the school skirts of the players ...

Paradox of Praxis 5 (2015)

One of Francis Alÿs' series of performative videos that politicize absurd or seemingly futile gestures, Paradox of Praxis 5 documents the artist's nocturnal perambulations through Juárez as he kicks a ball of fire along the city's desolate streets. Trans ...

The Silence of Ani (2015)

Once upon a time Ani was one of the most important cities of the Middle Ages. People started abandoning the city until all life left and silence fell into Ani. Yet, can't we do better than silence? ...

Children’s Game #15: Espejos (2013)

Boys stampede through the shells of small geometric homes, fancy boxes falling to bits in a dry-grass wasteland like futuristic ruins. The players flatten themselves behind walls, peer cautiously with half an eye from glassless windows. Each boy holds a pi ...

Children’s Game #14: Piedra, papel o tijera (2013)

This ancient Chinese game is played between two people, who in unison say 'rock, paper, scissors' before 'throwing' one of the three figures at each other: closed fist or flat hand or two fingers in a V shape. Rock blunts scissors, scissors cut paper, pape ...

Children’s Game #13: Piñata (2012)

A piñata is a papier-mâché figure stuffed with sweets. Common at birthdays in urban patios, here we find it in a field, where a garish Superman dangles between tall poles on a rope jerked by an adult, to make hitting harder. Each player is blindfolded a ...

Reel/Unreel (2012)

The cameras follow a reel of film as it unrolls through the old part of Kabul—pushed by two children, uphill and downhill, like a hoop. ...

Children’s Game #12: Musical Chairs (2012)

The game is filmed from above in a single take, emphasizing the inexorable process of subtraction. Six children place five chairs in a row, facing in alternate directions. When the music starts, the players skip one behind the other around the chairs. When ...

Watercolor (2011)

"Mixing water from the Red Sea with water from the Black Sea". Trabzon, Turkey-Aqaba, Jordan, 2010. ...

Children’s Game #11: Wolf and Lamb (2011)

A group of children hold hands in a circle. The child in the middle plays the lamb, the one outside is the wolf. The wolf tries to catch the lamb by breaking through the human fence, but the kids crouch quickly down, blocking him with lowered arms. If the ...

Children’s Game #10: Papalote (2011)

A 10-year-old boy in a pink salwar kameez stands near a dune-coloured wall under a powder-blue sky. He frowns and gesticulates, conversing in stops and starts with the heavens or at least with the gusting wind because you don't see his kite at first, and t ...

Children’s Game #9: Saltamontes (2011)

Girls and boys, together for once, hunt through lush grass and undergrowth, on the lookout for well-camouflaged grasshoppers. When one is found its hind legs are pulled off, though not its wings. Each child hurls his or her grasshopper up into the air, whe ...

Tornado (2010)

For the last decade Alÿs has made repeated trips to the dusty highlands south of Mexico City to chase the tornadoes that frequently occur in that region at the end of the dry season. Tornado unfolds in three movements: waiting for the storms, pursuing the ...

Children’s Game #7: Stick and Wheels (2010)

On a wide, gravelly mountain road, earth-coloured dwellings in the background, small boys scamper behind tyres of different thickness and circumference, beating them onwards with a stick. A donkey brays in sympathy. The thin, flexible tyres of bicycles are ...

If you are a typical spectator, what you are really doing is waiting for the accident to happen (2009)

"After about ten minutes the action comes to an abrupt end when Alÿs unthinkingly follows the bottle into the street and is hit by a passing car." Begins with the artist in quintessential observer mode, videotaping the movements of a plastic bottle as it ...

Children’s Game #6: Sandcastles (2009)

The castle must be positioned just far enough from the sea to be completed before the tide reaches it. As the moat is dug by busy spades, the vacated sand forms a growing pile in the middle. Sea water starts to rise into the moat from below. As the waves b ...

Children’s Game #5: Revolver (2009)

The props in this game are wooden sticks or branches shaped like guns. Two kids pretend to fire at each other, making elaborate and highly varied shooting noises. A further dramatic element is the creative use of whatever lends itself in the vicinity –du ...

Bolero (Shoe Shine Blues), 1996-2007 (2008)

A traditional animation, hand-drawn in 500+ frames (which are also on display as part of the installation). The animation consists solely of a shoe shine: hands move a length of cloth around and across a shoe, syncopated with a minimalistic melody and lyri ...

Children’s Game #4: Elastic (2008)

Close-up on shiny boots, knotted elastic, cobbles. Within the confines of a courtyard two demure little girls are playing a game of confinement, entrapment, escape. An elastic band has been stretched into a rectangle around four points –the legs of one g ...

Children’s Game #3: Coins (2008)

We see three kids from behind, standing at a set distance from a peeling, whitewashed wall. The rule is that each player throws a coin against the wall, that drops and rolls back on the pavement; the player whose coin remains the closest to the wall can ke ...

Children’s Game #2: Ricochets (2007)

The bay is peaceful, framed by low hills in the distance. Three boys stand thigh-deep in the brown water, trousers rolled up. The biggest, on the left, is proficient in the art of stone-skimming: sending flat pebbles spinning over the water in such a way t ...

Looking Up (2005)

2005, 00:03:07 ...

Railings (2004)

This video performance showcases two works by the artist. In the first, he walks through the streets of London, trailing a wooden drumstick along a series of metal railings, producing a percussive, sometimes bell-like noise. The camera follows behind, focu ...

The Green Line (2004)

In The Green Line, for which the axiom was 'sometimes the political is poetic, sometimes the poetic is political', Alÿs walks holding a punctured can of dribbling green paint along the contested width of the so-called Green Line established between Israe ...

The Nightwatch (2004)

The Nightwatch documents an action realised by Alÿs in 2004 in which he released a fox into London's National Portrait Gallery in the middle of the night and used the museum's CCTV system to follow its movements. The institution was chosen because unlike ...

Samples II (2004)

In "Samples II", Alÿs walks around London with a drum stick in his hand, playing the sounds of metal fences beside him. ...

El Gringo (2003)

As is well known, 'gringo' is the derogatory term Mexicans use to refer to NorthAmerican citizens. Shot in a central province of Mexico, Alÿs's video portrays the confrontation between a group of dogs protecting their master's home and an intruder (the ca ...

When Faith Moves Mountains (2002)

Alÿs's motto for When Faith Moves Mountains is "Maximum effort, minimum result." For this epic project the artist invited five hundred volunteers to walk up a sand dune on the outskirts of Lima, Peru, shoveling in unison, thus displacing the dune by a few ...

The Rehearsal I (2001)

A red VW Beetle drives up a hill, an image which is accompanied by a loud soundtrack of a brass band's rehearsal. The driver is listening to a recording of the rehearsal, and each time the band pauses, he steps off the pedal so the car rolls back down, and ...

Re-enactment (2000)

For this work Alÿs purchased a gun in Mexico City then walked through the city streets with the weapon in his hand. After eleven minutes he was arrested by the police. The following day he repeated the action, this time in cooperation with the police. By ...

Children's Game #1: Caracoles (1999)

High above the city that shimmers like a distant sea, a boy kicks a plastic bottle half full of liquid up a steep shanty road of light and dark. A norteño song plays somewhere. A truck passes. The challenge is to get to the top of the hill by kicking the ...

Cantos Patrioticus 1 - street (1998)

1998, 00:27:43 ...

Cantos Patrioticus 2 - studio (1998)

1998, 00:27:42 ...

Patriotic Tales (1997)

The video shows the artist walking in circles around the flagpole ("Madre Patria") in Zócalo, Mexico City's monumental central square, which is flanked by government institutions. This work relates to a storied incident that took place during the Mexican ...

Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing) (1997)

For more than nine hours, Francis Alÿs pushes a block of ice through the streets of Mexico City until it completely melts. ...

Semáforos (1995)

Zapatos Magnéticos (1994)

During the 5th Havana Biennial, artist Francis Alys put on his magnetic shoes and took daily walks through the streets of the city, collecting scraps of metal lying in his path. ...

Watercolor (2011)

"Mixing water from the Red Sea with water from the Black Sea". Trabzon, Turkey-Aqaba, Jordan, 2010. ...

Railings (2004)

This video performance showcases two works by the artist. In the first, he walks through the streets of London, trailing a wooden drumstick along a series of metal railings, producing a percussive, sometimes bell-like noise. The camera follows behind, focu ...

The Green Line (2004)

In The Green Line, for which the axiom was 'sometimes the political is poetic, sometimes the poetic is political', Alÿs walks holding a punctured can of dribbling green paint along the contested width of the so-called Green Line established between Israe ...

Samples II (2004)

In "Samples II", Alÿs walks around London with a drum stick in his hand, playing the sounds of metal fences beside him. ...

Re-enactment (2000)

For this work Alÿs purchased a gun in Mexico City then walked through the city streets with the weapon in his hand. After eleven minutes he was arrested by the police. The following day he repeated the action, this time in cooperation with the police. By ...

Patriotic Tales (1997)

The video shows the artist walking in circles around the flagpole ("Madre Patria") in Zócalo, Mexico City's monumental central square, which is flanked by government institutions. This work relates to a storied incident that took place during the Mexican ...

Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing) (1997)

For more than nine hours, Francis Alÿs pushes a block of ice through the streets of Mexico City until it completely melts. ...