Director’s Talk — Francis Alys at Tate Modern

Tate Modern will present a major retrospective of work by the
celebrated artist Francis Alÿs. Using diverse poetical and allegorical approaches Alÿs explores political subjects around contentious borders and economic crises. Elsewhere he has looked at his own identity and Latin America’s relationship to modernity.

After moving to Mexico City in the mid — 1980s Alÿs addressed the ‘everyday’ in works such as Paradox of Praxis (1997) when he pushed a block of ice around Mexico City until it melted. In his earlier work, When Faith Moves Mountains (2002), Alÿs recruited 500 volunteers in Lima, Peru. Each person moved a shovel full of sand one step at a time and together they moved a dune’s entire geographical location by a few inches.

Join Paul Hobson, director of the Contemporary Art Society, for a tour of this exhibition as it follows both Alÿs’s Mexican projects and those that have taken place in Lima, Jerusalem, Panama and London. The exhibition includes a new work made in the Strait
of Gibraltar.

Members are asked to purchase tickets prior to meeting the group. Meet at the entrance to the exhibition.

RSVP: membership@contemporaryartsociety.org