Research on Francis Alys's practice

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/alys-francis/ = Francis Alÿs caught the attention of the international art community following a number of idiosyncratic Performances enacted in Mexico City. While acts that included walking a mechanical dog down city roads were greeted with bewilderment by locals, his Mexican street recitals gave notice of the artist's uniquely imaginative approach to broaching anthropological and geopolitical themes, while simultaneously helping secure Mexico's place on the world map of contemporary art. As his career progressed, Alÿs further enhanced his reputation by working in volatile border zones across Latin America, North Africa, and the Middle East. These challenging locations have provided a context for inspired works that tackle themes of localism and globalism, usually within one and the same creative action. His diverse and multi-disciplinary practice, that includes performance, documentary film, painting, drawing, and photography, sees Alÿs work regularly in collaboration with local communities. Accomplishments Much of Alÿs's work falls under the umbrella of Social Practice Art in the way it reveals his commitment to making positive social contributions by placing local communities at the core. For his piece, When Faith moves mountains (2002), for example, he persuaded 500 volunteers to each move a small amount of sand, with a net result of shifting a large dune by just four inches. Alÿs had conceived of the project as a metaphor for the way in which collective action can affect small, but real, change. Alÿs's early works were called "paseos": leisurely meandering walks (often with props). For one of his most famous pieces, Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing) (1997), for example, he shoved an industrial sized block of ice through the streets until it had melted away (over a period of nine hours). In all cases, his paseos were conceived of to inspire local citizens to consider their living environments in allegorical and metaphorical terms. One of Alÿs most impressive and enduring series is focused on children's games. For Alÿs, these pieces are a celebration of the creativity of children who, in spite of their often-desolate surroundings, created by adult conflict and poverty, can teach us all lessons about the capacity for human happiness and optimism. Alÿs's paintings typically feature symbolic characters (the liar, prophet, the thief, the tourist, for example) who he places in desolate environments. His figures are, like the artist himself was when he first arrived in Mexico City, disorientated within unfamiliar surroundings. As the art critic Pablo Lafuente put it, "the paintings, and the figures in them, function for Alÿs like the landmarks someone might use to navigate their way around an unfamiliar city".