Francis Alÿs

Francis Alÿs was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1959 and studied architecture. In 1986 he moved to Mexico City, where he has lived and worked ever since. Art, architecture and social practice converge in his work. He explores everyday life through public actions, installations, performance art, video, painting and drawing. He himself has described his work as a sort of discursive argument composed of episodes, metaphors and parables. Across different media, Alÿs presents his distinct sensibility towards anthropological and political concerns; and probes urbanity, spatial justice and land-based poetics. He contrasts geological and technological time, and examines individual memory and collective mythology. His work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern, London, MoMA, New York, and the Venice Biennial.