contemporary art

The jury of the Biennial Award for Contemporary Art (BACA) 2010 prize has unanimously announced Francis Alys the winner. For over twenty years, Alÿs has lived in Mexico City and recently also in Casablanca. The BACA is intended as a tribute to an artist for his or her adventurous oeuvre and visible influence on other (younger) artists.

Francis Alÿs meets these criteria in exemplary fashion, adding to them a personal world brimming with poetic accents and enormous involvement with his neighbors from non-Western cultures. It is precisely this poetic and humanist side that gives his work such an exceptional power of expression. He is a ‘visual poet’, focusing on small situations with big implications on deeply-rooted levels of meaning. His work consists of photos, video, film, and painted works on paper and canvas, in which a striking element is the way he regularly commissions others to execute these paintings.

The Collector/El Colector. 1991-1992 | Metalic dogs magnetized on wheels, video, photographs, maps, sketches and documentation

Turista | 1996

Paradox of Praxis 1 | 1997
Alÿs pushes a block of ice through the streets of Mexico City until it melts; serving as a way to mark time and measure existence.

When Faith Moves Mountains | 2002
A Project for Geological Displacement | Francis Alÿs, collaborating with Rafael Ortega and Cuauhtémoc Medina.

On April 11th 2002, 500 voluntiers were called in order to form a line to move a sand dune situated in the surroundings of the city of Lima. This human comb pushed a certain quantity of sand a certain distance, thereby moving a sixteen-hundred-foot-long sand dune about four inches from its original position. The actual displacement was of an infinitesimal proportion, but not its metaphorical resonance.

El Gringo | 2003
In El Gringo, viewers experience the discomfort of being an outsider when the camera is confronted by a pack of snarling dogs.