Francis Alÿs

Biography

Since 1991, Francis Alÿs has produced a complex and elusive body of work in video, painting, performance, documentary film, and photography. A Belgian-born artist who lives in Mexico City, Alÿs explores issues ranging from political structures and transnational boundaries to questions of how the individual makes sense of social representations and cultural mythologies. In many of Alÿs' works, walking becomes a narrative process through which the artist investigates social and political spaces.

Francis Alys was born in 1959 in Antwerp, Belgium. He studied engineering and architecture at the Institut Supérieur d'Architecture Saint-Luc in Tournai, Belgium, from 1978 to 1983, and the Instituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice from 1983 to 1986. He studied Engineering and Architecture from 1978 to 1986 in Belgium and Italy. In 1987 he moved to Mexico to work as an architect. Since 1991 he had solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Torino, Italy; Kunsthalle Zurich, Switzerland; Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Kunst-Werke, Berlin and Witte de With, Rotterdam, among others. His works have been shown in many international group exhibitions, including Frieze; Art Basel; Art Brussels; MALBA Buenos Aires; 5 Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires; International Manifesta Foundation; Outlook - International Art Exhibition in Athens and Moving Pictures at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain in 2003.

Francis Alys lives and works in Mexico City.