Francis Alys Childrens Games

For Children’s Games, artist Francis Alÿs (b. Antwerp, 1959) registered children at play from all over the world, from children playing knucklebones in the Nepalese city of Kathmandu to those playing musical chairs in Oaxaca, Mexico or flying kites in Afghanistan.For Children’s Games, artist Francis Alÿs (b. Antwerp, 1959) registered children at play from all over the world, from children playing knucklebones in the Nepalese city of Kathmandu to those playing musical chairs in Oaxaca, Mexico or flying kites in Afghanistan.

Alÿs filmed in towns and villages, friendly places, as well as in zones ruled by conflict and tension, such as a Yezidi refugee camp in Iraq and in Kabul under siege. Children’s Games captivatingly portrays the ways in which children all over the world create their own world of games and leisure.

Alÿs’s oeuvre consists of films, performative actions, drawings, documents and paintings. They are playful, imaginative and rich observations of social situations and, sometimes, politically charged moments and places. This book is the first to present Children’s Games as a series and includes contributions by curator and art historian Cuauhtémoc Medina and ethnographer and filmmaker David MacDougall.