Francis Alÿs and the long arc of Juegos de niñxs

From the AD HOC NEWS Art Desk » Work Series & Retrospective Desk - The editors cover exhibitions, auctions, collections, prizes and artistic positions. Published: August 29, 2026 · Last checked: August 29, 2026, 10:19 AM

Francis Alÿs has turned the observation of seemingly simple children’s games into one of the most sustained bodies of work in recent art. His ongoing series Juegos de niñxs (Children’s Games) connects informal play in public space with broader questions of politics, migration and collective memory.

The arc of Juegos de niñxs

The video and photo series Juegos de niñxs has unfolded since 1999 and now encompasses dozens of works filmed in countries including Mexico, Afghanistan, Iraq, Belgium and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as outlined in the project description by David Zwirner. Each short piece focuses on a specific game, from spinning tops and hopscotch to kite flying and rope skipping, recording how children occupy streets, courtyards and open fields.

Curator Cuauhtémoc Medina has emphasized in accompanying texts that the project treats play as a kind of informal choreography of social structures, revealing how rules, improvisation and peer negotiation shape public life. Over more than two decades, the series has grown into a roaming, open-ended atlas of childhood, with new films added as Alÿs encounters different contexts.

Retrospective threads in recent exhibitions

The long-running focus on children’s games has generated a string of institutional presentations, among them the traveling exhibition Francis Alÿs: Juegos de niñxs, 1999–2025 at Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia (MAMU) in Bogotá, which brought together a substantial selection of the series. Earlier, the Barbican Art Gallery in London dedicated the survey Ricochets to the artist’s filmic engagement with play and movement, placing the games in dialogue with broader questions of urban choreography and political tension.

These shows underline how Alÿs treats each film as both document and allegory. The games remain concrete and locally rooted, yet their repetition across different geographies tracks how children everywhere transform limited resources into shared, temporary worlds.

From A Story of Deception to When Faith Moves Mountains

Before concentrating so intensely on children’s games, Alÿs became widely known for works that tested the elasticity of urban and political space. The exhibition A Story of Deception, initiated with Tate Modern and later shown at WIELS in Brussels and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, assembled videos, paintings and drawings that trace how perception, rumor and myth circulate in cities.

Among the works that entered MoMA’s collection in this context are Re-enactments (2001), When Faith Moves Mountains (2002) and Rehearsal I (Ensayo I) (1999–2001), which together explore gestures of repetition, rehearsal and collective action. In When Faith Moves Mountains, for instance, hundreds of volunteers in Lima attempted to shift a sand dune by a few centimeters, creating an almost absurd yet memorable image of shared effort.

Position between painting, film and social choreography

Alÿs trained as an architect before turning to art, and this background informs his precise handling of urban situations, from quiet walks to orchestrated processions. Over the years, he has combined painting, drawing, video, slide projection and simple mechanical objects, often keeping materials deliberately modest to match the everyday situations he observes.

His projects frequently begin with a deceptively simple proposition: walk following a leaking line of paint, carry a gun through Mexico City while being filmed twice, or invite children to play a local game in front of the camera. In each case, the work emerges less from spectacle than from how bodies move together and how stories accumulate around those movements.

The work core in numbers and locations

Although often associated with Mexico City, where he has long been based, Alÿs’s projects have unfolded on several continents, from the Middle East to Latin America and Europe. The Juegos de niñxs cycle alone includes films shot in cities and villages in Mexico, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bolivia, Morocco, Hong Kong and the Democratic Republic of Congo, among others, creating a geographically wide-ranging yet precise portrait of play.

Museums such as MoMA in New York and Tate in London hold key works, including major video installations and related paintings. These acquisitions underline that Alÿs’s practice, though often using light equipment and ephemeral actions, has found a firm place in the canon of contemporary art.

Current state of the work

Francis Alÿs continues to expand long-term series such as Juegos de niñxs while maintaining a practice that bridges painting, moving image and carefully scripted actions in public space.

This article was produced with a.i. support and editorially reviewed. All statements without guarantee; auction results, exhibition dates and awards may change at short notice.