Francis Alÿs and I meet at the Whitechapel Gallery in east London on a rain-sodden Thursday. Heavy traffic means I arrive 20 minutes late, but the Belgian-born contemporary artist greets me with a lazy smile that crinkles his hazel eyes. “Don’t worry, no one is rushing today. I have jet lag, so we’re taking it very slow.” Alÿs’ laconic warmth is soothing. Unfolding to his full 6’4”, the artist, his beanpole frame swathed in a voluminous olive jumper, explains that he is hoping to shake off the effects of his flight from Mexico City. The metropolis has been his home since 1986. Alÿs, then 27 and working as an architect, had been sent there as part of a Belgian civil service project. He had no thought of making a major relocation but found himself stuck there because of, as he puts it with striking understatement, “a sort of bureaucratic loop”. In the year that it took to untangle himself, he decide to “try something I’d wanted to do for a long time. I hesitate to call it ‘art’ . . . ” More than 30 years since he took those diffident steps — “small street interventions, some photography” — no one can doubt Alÿs’ right to use that word to describe his activity. Our meeting is occasioned by the decision to honour Alÿs with the Art Icon award, an annual prize made to an international contemporary artist by the Whitechapel Gallery in partnership with Swarovski, the jewellery maker. It is now in its seventh edition and previous winners include Howard Hodgkin, Richard Long and Mona Hatoum. Over his career, Alÿs has had solo shows at major institutions, including London’s Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. He has participated at documenta and the Venice Biennale, and his work is held in public collections worldwide. Read more