Previously shown at the Belgian Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennial and at WIELS, Brussels, (among other places) in 2023–24, Francis Alÿs’ ongoing series of films Children’s Games will have its UK premiere in the exhibition Ricochets at the Art Gallery of the Barbican Centre, London (27/06–01/09). The exhibition will also include a new site-specific community project, part of the artist’s continued engagement with cross-cultural contexts around the world.

Newspaper no. 142 is now online.

Newspaper no. 141 is now online.

The group exhibition Leaps of Faith — opening at Z33 (Hasselt, BE) on 31/03 — includes a video installation by Francis Alÿs. Curated by Tim Roerig, the exhibition contends with the question of faith in its religious but also wider social meanings, through works that address the power of art to pave paths beyond the familiar. (Until 25/08; image: Francis Alÿs, The Modern Procession, 2002 (still), video documentation of an action, 7 minutes 22 seconds.)

Following Francis Alÿs' Venice Biennale's return exhibition at Wiels, Brussels, Children's Game #22: Jump Rope is on loan to the university KU Leuven (BE). The film shot in 2020 on a rooftop in Hong Kong is displayed in the entrance hall of sports hall De Nayer at FaBeR until the end of 2025.

More than twenty years after Francis Alÿs' large scale project Cuando la fe mueve montañas (When Faith Moves Mountains), the Museo de Arte de Lima – MALI presents the exhibition Francis Alÿs: Cuando la fe mueve montañas (2022). Dos décadas después (26/01 - 02/06), curated by Cuauhtémoc Medina. On 11 April 2002, on the outskirts of Lima, Alÿs invited five hundred volunteers equipped with shovels to form a single line in order to displace a dune by a few centimetres, thus demonstrating the disproportion between an effort and its effect. This metaphoric action, summarised by the artist's motto “Maximum effort, minimum result", is the focus of the exhibition, which includes the film documenting the project as well as testimonies and archival material. On the occasion of the opening on 26 January, the museum will host a talk between Lucía García de Polavieja, Jimena Gonzalez, Natalia Majluf and Cuauhtémoc Medina, all of whom participated in the project. (Image: Francis Alÿs, When Faith Moves Mountains (Lima, Peru – April 11, 2002), 2002, in collaboration with Cuauhtémoc Medina and Rafael Ortega, photo documentation of an event)

Curator Nathalie Zonnenberg has included works by Francis Alÿs and Mario García Torres in her exhibition Taken Apart & Put Back Together Again at A Tale of A Tub, Rotterdam (31.01—21.04). The exhibition marks the fourth edition of an annual collaboration between Tlön Projects, Amsterdam, and A Tale of A Tub, and presents a variety of artworks selected from Tlön Projects' imaginary collection. (Photo: Mario García Torres, I always thought Anselmo's Invisible (1971) should be installed against a window, 2011, installation with 35mm color slide projection)

Newspaper no. 138 is now online.

Twelve years after the artist's retrospective at WIELS, Brussels, Francis Alÿs returns with the exhibition The Nature of the Game — a new, more comprehensive version of the exhibition he first presented at the Belgian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. In Venice, Alÿs presented a series of filmed children games made in Belgium, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Hong Kong, Mexico and Switzerland, in dialogue with a group of his discreet, small-format paintings. At WIELS, the artist adds several new films, including of children's games he recently saw in Ukraine. He confronts them with the film installation The Silence of Ani (2015). Curated by Dirk Snauwaert and Hilde Teerlinck, The Nature of the Game runs until January 7, 2024. (Photo: Children’s Game #26: Kisolo, Tabacongo 2021 [detail], in collaboration with Julien Devaux and Félix Blume)

Children’s Games, 1999-2022, a solo exhibition by Francis Alÿs will open on February 11 at The Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, MUAC in Mexico City, and will be on view until September 17, 2023. Curated by Cuauhtémoc Medina and Virginia Roy, the exhibition presents a large selection of Children's Games, from the videos marking the beginnings of the series in the late 1990s to the most recent ones produced in 2022.

Touches of Games, a solo exhibition by Francis Alÿs will open today December 16 at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in Taipei. Alÿs will present a selection of video projections. In his curatorial statement, Chien-Hung Huang describes how "in the freedom of game, "children “come into contact” with the environment, skills in handling objects, and the mastery of interacting with their friends. Alÿs’ arrangement and camera lens in particular highlight the “role-playing” and “action decision” within a group, which is a sort of “politicalness” that comes naturally with the game. The “game” suspends all the limits of reality and allows them (and even us) to draw lines and cross them." The exhibition is part of the 2022 Kuandu Biennale Time of the Art Society: How to Become Indi-genous? and it will be on view until March 12, 2023.

Newspaper no. 133 is now online.

Jan Mot is pleased to announce that Francis Alÿs will receive the Museum Ludwig’s 2023 Wolfgang Hahn Prize. The award provides for an exhibition of Alÿs’ work at the Cologne museum in the autumn of 2023. The institution will also acquire his work for its collection. 

“Of course I am much honored, and in these polarized times, receiving such an award is significant and invigorating, as it makes me feel that there is some coincidence of my own preoccupations and the public’s, and that a dialogue is possible,” — Francis Alÿs

You can now purchase two new publications by Francis Alÿs on BY ASSOCIATION website: Francis Alÿs first published in 2007 is now available in its second expanded edition. A fully updated artist's first comprehensive monograph contains essays by Russell Ferguson, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Jean Fisher and Michael Taussig.

The second publication - Francis Alÿs – The Nature of the Game is the official publication of the Belgian pavilion at the 59th Biennale di Venezia, curated by Hilde Teerlinck. The richly illustrated book contains Alÿs’ ideas and sketches he compiled in preparation for the Children’s Games, long-term projects which are now presented at the pavilion. It lets us glimpse into the engine room of his artistic practice, revealing key elements of his filmic poetics. An essay by the ethnographer and filmmaker David MacDougall embeds Alÿs’s observations of children’s play in the contexts of childhood studies as well as the history of ethnographic documentary film. 

Francis Alÿs' work is part of When Faith Moves Mountains, a major group show presented on the occasion of the reopening of the PinchukArtCentre (Kyiv), 144 days after the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion. The exhibition, whose title comes from the large scale project conducted by Alÿs in 2002, brings together works chosen from M HKA/the collection of the Flemish Community and focus on Ukraine as a country open to the world. (Image: Francis Alÿs)

Jan Mot's booth at Art Basel (CH) with works by Francis Alÿs, stanley brouwn, Andrea Büttner, Manon de Boer, Rineke Dijkstra, Mario Garcia Torres, David Lamelas, Edouard Merino, Lawrence Weiner, Ian Wilson (photo: Studio Shapiro).

Francis Alÿs. As Long as I’m Walking (15/10-16/01) at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts in Lausanne (CH) presents an overview of the artist’s video work of the last thirty years, with an emphasis on one of the central themes in his practice, namely walking. Through his seemingly insignificant walks, Francis Alÿs not only reimagines the city, he also creates narratives, spreads rumors, maps the social fabric of the place through actions that are sometimes short sometimes carried out over long distances or many hours, by turns dragging, pushing or carrying an accessory that stands in for a clue to reading the fable spun by the body in motion. While Francis Alÿs figures as a protagonist in most of his early videos, he moves behind the camera in a series of works begun in 1999, the Children’s Games or in Reel-Unreel (2011), one of the core works to come out of his explorations in Afghanistan. They are featured in the Lausanne show along with paintings and works on paper. A catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition: Francis Alÿs. As Long as I’m Walking, Nicole Schweizer (ed.). With texts by Julia Bryan-Wilson, Luis Pérez-Oramas, and Judith Rodenbeck, and an introduction by Nicole Schweizer. Co-ed. Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts of Lausanne and JRP Editions, Geneva, 2021 (2 editions FR. and EN.).

Jan Mot's booth at Art Basel (CH) with works by Francis Alÿs, Pierre Bismuth, stanley brouwn, Andrea Büttner, Mario Garcia Torres, Joachim Koester, David Lamelas, readymades belong to everyone®, Vonna-Michell and Ian Wilson (photo: Studio Shapiro).

Jan Mot participates in BXL x EMERGENT, presenting work by Francis Alÿs, Andrea Büttner, Manon de Boer and Mario Garcia Torres.
BXL x EMERGENT, which opens this weekend (08-09/05, 2-6 pm), is a collaboration between 10 Brussels galleries, presenting work at Emergent in Veurne. The project creates an opportunity for a live encounter between art, public and gallerists who will be personally and safely welcoming visitors during the opening weekend. The exhibition will be open on Saturdays and Sundays until 06/06, 2-6 pm).
Participating galleries: Ballon Rouge Collective, 
Dépendance
, Dvir
, Harlan Levey Projects
, Jan Mot
, La Maison De Rendez-Vous, 
Meessen De Clercq, 
Stems Gallery
, Super Dakota, 
Waldburger Wouters.

Caption: Andrea Büttner, Phone Etching, 2015, etching, framed, 212 x 113 cm (paper), 218 x 118,5 x 5 cm (frame), unique.

Jan Mot announces participation in Galleries Curate: RHE

In the first days of the Covid-19 pandemic, an informal group of contemporary galleries from around the world came together to discuss how to navigate through the new challenges of the global crisis as it affected our artists, staff and businesses. As an expression of this unity we initiated GALLERIES CURATE.
GALLERIES CURATE: RHE (RHE from Greek for that which flows) is the first chapter of this collaboration, an exhibition and website themed around a universal and, we hope, unifying subject: water. RHE’s first project will launch on January 4th, 2021, with an online presentation of works by Francis Alÿs, Giovanni Anselmo, and Latifa Echakhch, extending the exhibition A buoy if not a beacon. Continuing in stages through May 2021, additional projects will be added by participating galleries each month. 
Following the inaugural exhibition GALLERIES CURATE plan to invite new participants and add further curated chapters to a global conversation of thematic relationships between galleries, artists, and their audiences.

As a consequence of the new lockdown measures in Belgium, the gallery will be closed from 2 November till 14 December. Today you can still visit the exhibition 'A buoy if not a beacon' with works by Francis Alÿs, Giovanni Anselmo and Latifa Echakhch. 
The exhibition will be extended till 16 January. 

Sandlines, the story of history directed by Francis Alÿs has been selected for the International Competition of the 7th Porto/Post/Doc: Film & Media Festival, that will take place from November 20th to 29th, 2020.