In 2001, Francis Alÿs responded to an invitation to the 2001 Venice Biennale by sending a peacock in his place. Such playfulness is characteristic of the artist's practice, which will be presented in its full scope for the 59th Venice Biennale (23 April–27 November 2022), where he will represent Belgium.
Alÿs was drafted by the Belgian army to Mexico in 1986, where he has developed an interdisciplinary practice centred on dynamics in urban space and geopolitics. Having completed work with an NGO on recovery efforts towards the aftermath of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, Alÿs drifted towards an artistic practice, leaving his previous training in architecture behind.
Confronted with the density of Mexico City, Alÿs began making sense of the city through its local residents, capturing their 'presence on the urban chessboard.' Between 1993 and 1997, the artist collaborated with sign painters, including Rotulistas Juan Garcia, Enrique Huerta, and Emilio Rivera to copy his oil paintings. The project called into question the myth of artistic originality, further explored in The Fabiola Project, made up of a growing collection of over 600 reproductions of Jean-Jacques Henner's 1885 portrait of Fabiola.
Such expansions are indicative of an artist who moves beyond the confines of the studio. Through the 1990s, Alÿs activated his own position in urban space through performances such as Fairy Tales (1994), where he moves through the city as a blue strand from his jumper unravels behind him; or Paradox of Praxis 1 (1997), which sees him push a block of ice across Mexico City, before it gradually disappears, recalling the ephemerality of works by artists such as Richard Long and Hamish Fulton.
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