GIAF2023

b. 1959, Antwerp. Lives and works in Mexico City

Francis Alÿs(b.1959) was born in Antwerp, Belgium, and has lived and worked in Mexico City since 1986, when he traveled to Mexico for international relief work. He has been working on projects in Iraq since 2016, including the series Children’s Games, which metaphorizes geopolitical issues using children as protagonists. Sandlines, the Story of History (2020) is one of them, which will be presented at the festival. A feature-length fiction film in collaboration with Julien Devaux, the film bridges the past and present as children in a small mountain village in the Mosul region role-play characters of different nationalities and tribes from the region’s past history. After premiering at Sundance Film Festival in 2020, Sandlines, the Story of History will be screened at GIAF23 for the first time in Korea.

Recently, he held a solo exhibition, Children’s Games (MUAC, 2023). He was awarded the BACA-laureate prize in 2010, the EYE Art & Film Prize from EYE Film Museum in 2018. In 2020, he received the Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon Award and the Rolf Schock Prize in Visual Arts. Francis Alÿs represented Belgium at the 2022 Venice Biennale.