FRANCIS ALŸS / 04 09 / 05 01 2020 / Children’s Games

https://macm.org/en/exhibitions/francis-alys-childrens-games/

Focusing on the theme The Life of Things, proposed by curator María Wills Londoño in collaboration with Audrey Genois and Maude Johnson, the MAC and MOMENTA | Biennale de l’image unite to present Children’s Games by Francis Alÿs.

Francis Alÿs presents his series Children’s Games, a collection of scenes of children at play around the world. Ongoing since 1999 and now comprising nearly twenty videos, this inventory of childhood activities shows how children turn simple, ordinary things—chairs, coins, sand, stones, plastic bottles—into the foundation of unlikely and fantastical universes.

By exploring public space and the everyday through the playful imagination of children, Alÿs proposes an intimate yet political view of the universal and unifying nature of games. Although the current state of the world prevents us from imagining globalization as a positive form of togetherness, this praxis of imagination might express the very essence of humanism, reinvented.

Childrens Games 18 – Knucklebones from Francis Alÿs on Vimeo.

Childrens Games 17 – Chunggi from Francis Alÿs on Vimeo.

Childrens Games 16 – Hopscotch from Francis Alÿs on Vimeo.