Artists

Francis Alÿs

Press release

Children are the focus of this monumental exhibition that revolves around the thirty video projections of Children’s Games, in which Francis Alÿs (b. 1959 in Antwerp, based in Mexico City) shows playing children from all over the world. For over twenty years, Alÿs has been traveling to places as diverse as Congo, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Alaska, and Cuba to film children who are completely immersed in their outdoor playing, frequently using materials they have found. While some of the games have long traditions, others have been spontaneously invented by the children in reaction to their surroundings.

Alÿs chose to turn the largest room of the exhibition—known as the “high hall”—over to the children of Cologne. Fifty schoolchildren between eight and thirteen—like the children in the films—will curate a children’s museum and a playing itinerary in this space. 

In the exhibition, the artist will present a new film in his Children’s Games series that was made exclusively with local children, driving home the connection between Alÿs’s project and the children’s museum: Kids Take Over.

Curators: Rita Kersting and Santi Grunewald