Francis Alÿs Movies

The game “Mosquito of Pachacútec” refers to the historical metaphor of how the Inca Empire was challenged in its territorial...

The children of a mountain village near Mosul re-enact a century of Iraqi history, from the secret Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916 to the realm of...

The Belgian-born and Mexican-based conceptual artist Francis Alÿs arrived in Iraq in October 2016 to document the displacements caused by the...

A 10-year-old boy in a pink salwar kameez stands near a dune-coloured wall under a powder-blue sky. He frowns and gesticulates, conversing in stops...

Grandma’s Footsteps in Britain, Red light, green light in North America, Thunder, weather, lightning in Austria, One, two, three, ciggy...

Presented at the Iraqi Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale.

For more than nine hours, Francis Alÿs pushes a block of ice through the streets of Mexico City until it completely melts.

Each person’s action affects everybody. This fine principle of teamwork applies even when individuals are pulling in different directions....

Each couple tries to save an orange from gravity. When it falls, the pair is eliminated. This exercise in collaboration involves intimacy: faces are...

A guitar, a bacalao and a teddy bear dangle at the top of a wooden pole. The mast is slickened with grease. A group of teenagers gather. Strength and...

The name of the game comes from the Spanish “tenedor,” fork, but its other name, “Come fango, Eat Mud,” seems more apt as we...

A group of children hold hands in a circle. The child in the middle plays the lamb, the one outside is the wolf. The wolf tries to catch the lamb by...

Over the city of Lubumbashi looms the mampala or slag heap of the Étoile du Congo cobalt mine, its lower slopes today sifted by the...

Born in the recent past in school playgrounds and now a national sport, Nzango is a female-only game. The aim is to imitate, or more mysteriously,...

Outside a stark tent city, this version of the game involves a grid of squares, two across by six long, marked by lines gouged into the arid ground....

This ancient Chinese game is played between two people, who in unison say ‘rock, paper, scissors’ before ‘throwing’ one of...

In August 2017, during the final phase of the Fatah (Conquest) Operation, the Iraqi Army pushed Islamic State combatants back from the east bank of...

The game is filmed from above in a single take, emphasizing the inexorable process of subtraction. Six children place five chairs in a row, facing in...