Francis Alÿs

Francis Alÿs - The Commuters 2005, © Francis Alÿs

Tate Modern presents a major retrospective of work by the celebrated, experimental artist Francis Alÿs. Using diverse poetical and allegorical approaches, and working in a variety of mediums such as painting, video projection, animation and sculpture, Alÿs explores political subjects such as contentious borders and economic crises.

He moved to Mexico City in the mid 1980s where he addressed everyday life in works such as Paradox of Praxis1997 when he pushed a block of ice around Mexico City until it melted. Elsewhere he has looked at Latin America's relationship to modernity. For example in When Faith Moves Mountains 2002, a large-scale action, five hundred Peruvians moved a dune by digging spadefuls of sand. This exhibition follows both his Mexican projects and those that have taken place in Lima, Jerusalem, Panama and London. It includes a new work made in the Strait of Gibraltar.

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