State of the Art Francis Alÿs

Welcome to the Venice Biennale!

Francis Alÿs represents Belgium at the Venice Biennale.

Artist Francis Alÿs will be taking “Do We Live Because We Narrate?” to the 59th Venice Biennale. They will fill the Belgian pavilion with new and existing works that question the relevance of art in conflict and crisis situations.

Children’s Games

Playing marbles in Jordan, building sandcastles on the Belgian coast, or playing football in Mosul: the series Children's Games features footage that Alÿs has collected over the last 20 years of kids playing local games.

Liberation Day

The Biennale, originally planned for 2021, was postponed due to the pandemic. The new opening day is now the day before Italy's Liberation Day, which is the perfect occasion to celebrate togetherness.

'Alÿs puts crisis situations into images in an accessible manner.

It's happening! The internationally acclaimed artist Francis Alÿs, together with curator Hilde Teerlinck, will be taking over the Belgian pavilion in Venice. In 2020, the five-member jury selected the duo from six entries including other big names such as Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and An Demeester. “Francis Alÿs deals with history, topicality and location in an impressive way,” the jury concluded. After a year's delay, they have collected new and existing work around the short film “Haram Football.” This is not the first time that Alÿs has participated in the Biennale. In 2017, he was a guest at the Iraqi pavilion with his work about the Yezidi refugee camp.

— Welcome to the Biennale! The Venice Biennale is an international art exhibition that takes place every other year, from May to November, and focuses on contemporary art and architecture. The Venice Film Festival is also part of the event. The event has existed for 125 years and is now gearing up for its 59th edition under the name "How will we live together?". During each Biennale, an artistic director gets the opportunity to curate the central exhibition of the prestigious event. This year, that honor goes to Cecilia Alemani, an Italian curator from New York. In addition to the central exhibition, you can also find the national pavilions and independent exhibitions during the event. The Belgian pavilion can once again count on the support and sponsorship of ION.

— Children's Game #19: Haram Football The submission of Alÿs and Teerlinck was built around the nine-minute film “Haram Football.” In the film, Alÿs shows children playing soccer in the streets of the Iraqi city of Mosul, something that IS had banned or declared “haram” (forbidden) at the time. By dribbling with an imaginary ball, the children got around the ban and could forget about the brutal war. The universal visual language, choreography, and creativity gives the work a topical edge. In his work, and at the Biennale, he tries to portray crisis situations in an accessible way.

Francis Alÿs

Visual artist Francis Alÿs was born in 1959 as Francis De Smedt, but chose his mother's surname as his artist name. He studied architecture in Tournai

and attended the Universitario di Architettura in

Venice. In 1986, he moved to Mexico City to help as an architect in the reconstruction following the previous year's earthquake. With work in the collections of MoMA in New York, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Tate Modern in London and Center Pompidou in Paris, Alÿs is indispensable in the modern art world.

ION Skybox

Francis Alÿs is no stranger to ION: you can find his work in the ION Skybox. Paul Thiers, co-founder of ION, talks about the art on display. “We have various artworks hanging in our Skybox. You might recognize the work of photographer Dirk Braeckman or emerging artist Indrikis Gelzis. But the showpiece in our collection is undoubtedly the 12 drawings by Francis Alÿs from the animated film Bolero (Shoe Shine Blues). This film consists of about 500 frames or drawings that have since been sold to various museums and institutions. As a big fan of Alÿs, I absolutely had to get some of these,” says Paul Thiers.