Francis Alÿs is a Belgian born artist, born in 1959 Alÿs originally trained as an architect (Zwirner D 2021). He would move to Mexico City in 1986, where he still lives and works today. After seeing the civil unrest of his new home Alÿs was inspired to become a visual artist, leaving the architectural profession (Zwirner D 2012). His artwork spans many different media from painting, to photography, performance and filmography. It was announced that Francis Alÿs will represent Belgium at the Venice Bienalle in 2022.
Francis Alÿs’ work is politically satirical and often absurd. Alÿs commonly portrays urban living, political and social tensions in his artwork. These themes are more often depicted in his film and performance pieces [IMG 1 and 2]. Alÿs has employed paseos (walks that resist the subjection of common space) since the start of his career with pieces like The Collector (Basualdo C 1999). When making his films he often uses children as the subject matter. He incorporates more abstract and surreal elements into his traditional works too, although they’re often less satirical and more for visual intrigue [IMG 3-5].
His traditional work is where Alÿs’ humor is most prevalent. His painting Untitled (in three parts) has a man in a blank background in a pose that either suggests that he’s moving it or preparing to dance with it. La lecon de musique [IMG. 4] is both humorous and bizarre, featuring two men blowing on a piece of sheet music to make it stand.
Alÿs took an interest in the wars in the middle east and those fighting them (Yood J 2021). A piece of his work Color Matching [https://francisalys.com/color-matching/]. Is a fine example of him capturing political unrest in an interesting and humorous fashion. In the short video an overlay of a man tries to match the colors and paint the footage of a Kurdish battalion. In the end the artist wipes away the colors he has painted, returning to a blank canvas.
Moving from satire to social commentary Alÿs has a long running series called Children’s Games. Starting in 1999 in Mexico City Alÿs would film children playing games in his travels [Yood J 2021]. His eighteenth and most recent work in the series films two children in Nepal playing knucklebones. The series has garnered small controversy for the nineteenth addition [Greenberger A 2020]. In the nineteenth video children in Iraq are filmed playing soccer, which is a sport that the Islamic state has attempted to ban [Greenberger A 2020].
Francis Alÿs is famous for his performance art pieces. His first performance in 1991 titled “The Collector” saw him walk a magnetic toy dog down a road collecting metal bits of scrap. A more recent performance “The Silence of Ani” took place in the destroyed Armenian city of Ani. Alÿs gave instruments that mimicked the sounds of birds to teenagers and instructed them to hide in the ruins of Ani. The children would then play the instruments to create the illusion that Ani had life returning to it.
Francis Alÿs is capable giving a sincere message without coming across as preachy. His work is of a quality that he still maintains a level of respect despite his absurdist works and antics. Francis Alÿs is an artist that makes meaningful statements on serious topics with a lighthearted façade.
[IMG. 5] Una historia de desencuentro, Gibraltar (Oil on canvas) Zwirner, David. “At Sea.” David Zwirner, 2020. https://www.davidzwirner.com/viewing-room/2020/at-sea.
[1] Basualdo, Carlos. “Head to Toes: Francis Alys’s Paths of Resistance.” ArtForum, April, 1999. Accessed March 8,2021. https://www.artforum.com/print/199904/head-to-toes-francis-alys-s-paths-of-resistance-32327
[2] Greenberger, Alex. “Francis Alÿs, Artist with a Timely Interest in Borders, Will Represent Belgium at 2022 Venice Biennale, June 15, 2020. Accessed April 11, 2021. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/francis-alys-venice-biennale-2022-1202691215/
[3] Yood, James. “Francis Alÿs Belgian Born Conceptual Artist” Britannica, February 18, 2021. Accessed April 11, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francis-Alys
[4] Zwirner, David. “Francis Alÿs – Biography.” David Zwirner, February 25, 2021. Accessed March 8, 2021. https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/francis-alys/biography
[5] Zwirner, David. “Francis Alÿs to Represent Belgium at the 2022 Venice Biennale.” David Zwirner. Accessed March 8, 2021. https://www.davidzwirner.com/news/2020/francis-alys-to-represent-belgium-at-the-2022-venice-biennale
drawersdrawerblog 
While Francis Alÿs’ work is definitely interesting, I have a difficult time seeing how some of his work could be described as humorous. Color matching specifically stuck with me. When I watch it, the brighter colors of the paint in comparison to the background of the desert, soldiers, and tank give me a deep sense of somberness. When the artist gets rid of what he was trying to paint, it feels as if he is overcome with a great sense of futility, which is possibly meant to reflect the situation in the Middle East. With that in mind, it feels incorrect to describe as humorous.
-Hunter Thompson
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When I read your post, I was at first most shocked by Francis Alys’s choice to make art during wars in the middle east. Just as Hunter says, I found it hard to find this work humorous and instead found it a bit bleak and more serious. I really enjoyed reading about the descriptions of how Alys made his performance work; I am admittedly a bit jealous of Alys’s immense creativity. Personally, I found the last two pieces that you feature my favorites because of their bright pastel colors and transcendent nature. The absurdity of the last two pieces better reflects the playfulness you discuss than the Color-Matching work, I think.
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This is Jenna Manzelli. I forgot to sign my name
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Francis Alÿs’s eye for unparalleled concepts is quite impressive. He is also very well rounded, having experience in architecture, artistry, cinematography, photography, and in commentary. Not only is he a triple threat, but to me it seems more like a quadruple or quintuple. The variety of mediums and pieces included are extremely interesting. They are very unique, but all seem to have the commonality of “humor” to them. Alÿs’s incorporation of humor is insightful, because it does not seem to take away from his message or his skill.
-Elizabeth Case
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It is always nice to see an art-minded architect leave the industry, since as I understand it, they wreak havoc on the lives of the engineers left to clean up their messes. I see the comical tone in his performance “Color Matching,” and in the surreal art pictured thereafter. “The Silence of Ani” and his other works, taking place in many different countries and to varying degrees of controversy, are very compelling to me. I think many 2D artists wish their art had deeper statements than originally intended, and bake context into pieces long after they’re made — leaving the unbeknownst viewer confused about meaning without said context. With these performance arts, it is much harder to show anything without making these clear statements, as the statement is kind of the whole point. The world of performance art is very new to me, and I’m glad to have run into an example such as Alÿs.
– Phoebe Ackerman
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