Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs: Francis Alÿs does not ask us to understand his works, he asks us to traverse them. In a world saturated with spectacular images and thunderous artistic gestures, this Belgian, who has lived in Mexico since 1986, develops an artistic practice based on the simplicity of the gesture and the complexity of its resonances. Neither a painter in the traditional sense nor a performer in the theatrical sense, Alÿs occupies a singular artistic territory where the act of walking becomes a poetic instrument of resistance to contemporary urban logics.
The work of Francis Alÿs blossoms in the interstitial space between art and anthropology, between the minimal gesture and the maximal political charge. Since his first wanderings in the streets of Mexico City in the early 1990s, the artist has developed a practice that questions the modes of occupation of urban space. His actions, documented by video and extended through painting, constitute a coherent corpus of investigations into contemporary geopolitical tensions.
Born in Antwerp in 1959, Francis Alÿs arrived in Mexico as an architect, commissioned to participate in post-earthquake reconstruction projects in 1985. This architectural training remained fundamental to his artistic approach: he never forgot that urban space is first and foremost a social construct, a set of constraints and possibilities that determine the modalities of collective existence. His transition to art, around 1989, constituted less a break than a radicalization of this concern for space as a revealer of social power relations.
Walking as a way of writing space
The work of Francis Alÿs finds its deepest theoretical resonance in the thought of Michel de Certeau, particularly in his analysis of walking as a practice of space developed in “The Practice of Everyday Life”. For Certeau, the act of walking constitutes a form of spatial enunciation that escapes urban surveillance and control systems [1]. This perspective radically transforms our understanding of Alÿs’ wanderings, which are no longer merely aesthetic exercises but a true politics of space.
In “The Collector” (1991-1992), Alÿs drags a magnetic plush dog through the streets of Mexico, collecting the metallic debris scattered on the asphalt. This seemingly playful action reveals, through the progressive accumulation of ferrous residues, the state of disrepair of the Mexican urban infrastructure. Alÿs’ minimal gesture transforms walking into a tool for social investigation, revealing what official urban planning policies strive to conceal.
This critical dimension of walking finds its most accomplished expression in “Paradox of Praxis I (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing)” (1997), where Alÿs pushes a block of ice through the streets of Mexico City for nine hours, until it melts completely. The action directly challenges the notions of productivity and efficiency that structure the neoliberal economy. By investing considerable effort for a null result, Alÿs actualizes Michel de Certeau’s reflections on everyday tactics of resistance: it is a matter of disrupting, through the very logic of the absurd, the rhythms and purposes imposed by the rational organization of urban space.
Alÿs’ wanderings are part of this theoretical tradition that, from Baudelaire to Certeau via the Situationists, thinks of urban walking as a critical practice. But Alÿs radicalizes this approach by transforming his movements into documented artistic events. His journeys are no longer the subjective experience of the flâneur but the construction of artistic objects that question contemporary modes of circulation and control in the metropolitan space.
This approach finds particular resonance in the Mexican context, where rapid urbanization and the informality of many neighborhoods create spaces of friction between official planning and popular uses. Alÿs develops a poetics of these interstices, revealing how inhabitants daily invent modes of occupation that escape the dominant logics of planning.
The critical effectiveness of Alÿs’ actions lies in their ability to reveal, through the minimal diversion of everyday gestures, the invisible structures that organize the urban experience. By walking differently, by stopping where one does not usually stop, by collecting what is ordinarily neglected, the artist actualizes the revealing function of art that Certeau assigned to everyday practices of resistance.
The video documentation of these actions does not constitute a simple recording but participates in their critical effectiveness. By transforming the ephemeral into an archive, by making the unrepeatable reproducible, Alÿs also questions contemporary modes of circulation and validation of art. His videos function like viruses, spreading through international artistic circuits and contaminating other urban contexts with their questions.
This political dimension of walking finds its extension in Alÿs’ geopolitical projects, notably “The Green Line” (2004), where the artist follows on foot, while pouring green paint, the 1948 armistice line in Jerusalem. The action reveals the arbitrariness of any border while reactivating, through the mere physical presence of the walker, divisions that diplomatic agreements strive to naturalize.
This politics of wandering finds its theoretical foundations in Certeau’s analysis of everyday “arts of doing”. For the French theorist, these ordinary practices constitute forms of micropolitical resistance that, without overthrowing dominant structures, perturb them sufficiently to create spaces of freedom. Alÿs radicalizes this analysis by transforming these perturbations into artistic events that reveal the political dimension of seemingly anodyne gestures.
Sharing the sensible and redistributing roles
The artistic practice of Francis Alÿs finds a second essential theoretical illumination in Jacques Rancière’s reflections on the “distribution of the sensible” and the political function of art. For Rancière, political art does not consist in conveying political messages but in redistributing the shares between the visible and the invisible, between the sayable and the unsayable, that structure the social order [2]. This perspective allows us to grasp the properly political dimension of Alÿs’ interventions, which never resort to propaganda but to the redistribution of perceptions.
In “When Faith Moves Mountains” (2002), Alÿs organizes the collective displacement of a sand dune in Lima, Peru, mobilizing five hundred volunteers armed with shovels. The action, of evident futility from the point of view of geological efficiency, radically redistributes usual social roles. Inhabitants of the shantytowns of Ventanilla, ordinarily invisible in the Peruvian public space, become the protagonists of an international artistic event. This redistribution of roles constitutes the true political stake of the action: it makes visible a population usually relegated to the margins of representation.
This political dimension does not lie in the explicit content of the work but in its very form. By organizing a collective action around an apparently absurd objective, Alÿs temporarily suspends the logics of profitability and efficiency that ordinarily govern social organization. This suspension opens a space of possibility where other modalities of coexistence can emerge, if only temporarily.
Rancière insists that political art does not consist in representing politics but in reconfiguring the very conditions of representation. Alÿs’ actions operate precisely according to this logic: they do not explicitly denounce social inequalities but create situations where these inequalities become perceptible differently. In “The Green Line”, the artist does not take a stand in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but makes sensible the arbitrariness of any border as well as its constraining reality.
This approach finds particular resonance in the Latin American context, where the relationship between art and politics has long been thought of in terms of explicit commitment. Alÿs develops an alternative to this tradition by exploring the indirect ways in which art can intervene in the public space. His actions do not advocate for a specific cause but create situations where spectators are led to reconsider their habitual perceptions of social space.
The series “Children’s Games” (1999-present) exemplifies this politics of perceptual redistribution. By documenting children’s games in geopolitically tense contexts (Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine), Alÿs never falls into miserabilism but reveals the persistence of forms of life that escape the logics of war. This persistence does not constitute a message of hope but a fundamental anthropological datum: despite the most dramatic contexts, playful invention continues to structure the child’s experience.
This anthropological dimension of Alÿs’ works meets Rancière’s concerns about the ability of art to reveal forms of life ignored by dominant discourses. By documenting these children’s games, the artist does not produce a testimony on war but reveals the coexistence of different temporalities within the same social space. This coexistence disrupts univocal representations of geopolitical violence by revealing the irreducible complexity of the real.
The political effectiveness of these documentations lies in their ability to suspend our usual categories of perception. Faced with images of children playing in the rubble of Mosul, the viewer can no longer maintain a uniform representation of war. This suspension of perceptual certainties constitutes, according to Rancière, the specific political function of art: not to convince but to disturb, not to teach but to disorient.
Alÿs’ paintings are part of this same logic of perceptual redistribution. His small canvases, often executed at night, function as poetic condensations of his actions. They do not constitute illustrations of his performances but autonomous objects that explore other modalities of relationship to space and time. Through their reduced scale and delicate execution, they contrast with the geographical scope of the actions they accompany, creating a play of scales that disturbs our perceptual habits.
This multimedia approach allows Alÿs to explore different modalities of aesthetic resistance. His actions question the uses of public space, his paintings reveal alternative temporalities, his videos question the modes of circulation of contemporary art. This multiplication of supports is not opportunistic but a coherent strategy of intervention in different regimes of sensibility.
The critical strength of Alÿs’ work ultimately lies in its ability to avoid the pitfall of didacticism without falling into aestheticism. His interventions do not deliver explicit messages but create situations where the usual order of perceptions is momentarily suspended. This suspension opens up possibilities for perceptual reconfigurations that constitute the true political stake of his work.
Art as a laboratory of alternatives
The work of Francis Alÿs fundamentally questions contemporary modes of resistance to the neoliberal rationalization of existence. Faced with the growing commodification of urban space and the acceleration of social rhythms, the artist develops a practice of slowness and apparent inefficiency that constitutes a form of passive resistance to the dominant logics of productivity.
This resistance is not about nostalgia but about inventing alternative modalities of collective existence. Alÿs’ actions function as laboratories where other relationships to time, space, and efficiency are experimented with. In “Rehearsal I” (1999-2001), a red Volkswagen tirelessly attempts to climb a hill in Tijuana, systematically failing and starting over each time. This obsessive repetition questions the mythologies of progress that structure the imaginary of Latin American modernization.
The critical effectiveness of this piece lies in its ability to reveal the Sisyphean aspect of many economic development enterprises. By transforming failure into an aesthetic spectacle, Alÿs does not fall into cynicism but reveals the tragic and comic dimension of certain collective aspirations. This revelation does not lead to a moral lesson but to a suspension of certainties that allows us to consider the stakes of development differently.
Alÿs’ recent projects in Afghanistan and Iraq reveal a significant evolution of his practice towards increasingly dramatic contexts. This evolution is not about sensationalism but about a radicalization of his questions about modes of coexistence in spaces of conflict. In “Reel-Unreel” (2011), two Afghan children run through the streets of Kabul, alternately unrolling and rolling up a film reel. This simple action reveals the persistence of forms of play and invention in a context of permanent war.
These documentations raise complex questions about the ethical modalities of war representation. Alÿs systematically avoids miserabilism by focusing on the forms of daily resistance developed by civilian populations. This approach meets Susan Sontag’s reflections on war photography: rather than documenting suffering, it is a matter of revealing the forms of life that persist despite violence.
Alÿs’ originality lies in his ability to avoid the pitfalls of humanitarian voyeurism without falling into the aestheticization of violence. His documentations reveal how art can intervene in contexts of conflict without claiming to resolve them. This modesty paradoxically constitutes the political strength of his work: by renouncing grand declarations, it opens up more nuanced spaces of reflection on contemporary geopolitical issues.
The international dimension of Alÿs’ career also raises questions about the modes of circulation of critical art in institutional circuits. His works, exhibited in the most prestigious Western artistic institutions, question the relationships between aesthetic resistance and market integration. This tension does not invalidate the critical scope of his work but reveals the structural contradictions of contemporary art.
The effectiveness of Alÿs’ works ultimately lies in their ability to create situations of reflection rather than objects of cultural consumption. His actions function as catalysts that reveal the latent tensions of social space without claiming to resolve them. This revealing function constitutes the specific contribution of art to contemporary political debates: not to provide solutions but to complexify the terms of problems.
The work of Francis Alÿs thus invites us to rethink contemporary modes of social critique. Faced with the spectacular forms of political contestation, he develops an aesthetic of discretion that reveals the political dimension of seemingly anodyne gestures. This revelation does not lead to programs of action but to a sensitization to the micropolitical stakes that structure daily existence.
The strength of this approach lies in its ability to avoid the pitfall of moralism without falling into aesthetic indifference. Alÿs’ interventions create situations where spectators are led to reconsider their usual relationships to space, time, and efficiency. This reconsideration constitutes a necessary prerequisite for any true political transformation: it reveals the contingency of our perceptual certainties and opens up possibilities for alternative organization of collective experience.
The art of Francis Alÿs ultimately teaches us that political resistance can take detours, that critical effectiveness is not necessarily measured by the amplitude of the transformations produced but by the quality of the questions raised. In a world where spectacular forms of contestation often seem to be recuperated by the very logics they claim to combat, Alÿs explores the political potentialities of modesty, slowness, and apparent inefficiency. This exploration constitutes a valuable contribution to contemporary reflections on the modalities of social critique and the political functions of art.
- Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life. 1. Arts de faire, Paris, Gallimard, 1990.
- Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, Paris, La Fabrique, 2000.
