PORTO.- With a career spanning four decades, Francis Al’s (born 1959, Antwerp, Belgium) has forged a unique and radical practice ranging from painting and drawing to film and animation. Trained as an architect and urbanist in Belgium and Italy, Al’s became interested in the civic role of the urban environment. He moved to Mexico City in 1986 where the rapidly transforming city and the consequent changes to social dynamics in the late 1980s inspired him to become a visual artist.


Children’s Games is an ongoing archive of the urban practices that modernity has banished from everyday life, as the concepts of public space and free time have grown increasingly distorted by the domination of motor vehicles and electronic diversions.


Action is at the centre of Al’s’s practice. He was the protagonist of most of his interventions in the 1990s, using his own body because it was immediately available. Children’s Games (1999–present) marks a clear shift: his agency was expanded and redistributed as children became the subjects. Taking its title from one of the earliest films in the series – Children’s Game #2: Ricochets (2007) – the exhibition emerges from the changing nature of participation in his practice, reflecting possibilities of collective consciousness and bodily agency.

Complementing the expansive universe of Children’s Games, the exhibition presents some animation works, building on Al’s’s interest in play through a focused exploration of hand games. Play is integrated and encouraged in the galleries through dedicated playrooms.

The exhibition Ricochets was organized by Barbican, London in collaboration with the Fundaēćo de Serralves — Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Florence Ostende. The Serralves presentation was coordenated by Filipa Loureiro, Museum curator.

CHILDREN’S GAMES INDIVIDUAL

For the past two decades Al’s has travelled to over 15 countries around the world to film children’s games – from “musical chairs” in Mexico to “leapfrog” in Iraq, “jump rope” in Hong Kong and “1, 2, 3, Freeze!” in London. Staged in dialogue with an expansive selection of paintings, this immersive multi- screen installation presents the most comprehensive survey of the Children’s Games to date. Recording the universality and ingenuity of play, the series foregrounds social interactions which are in decline due to rapid urbanisation, the erosion of communities and the prevalence of digital entertainment.

Each film records lived experiences of play in different contexts and environments around the world, including Nepal, Belgium, Morocco, and Cuba. The artist often travels to games’ locations by invitation, responding to specific contexts such as the war in Afghanistan for dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany (2012) or extractive processes and environmental issues for the 7th edition of the Lubumbashi Biennale, Democratic Republic of the Congo (2022).

All films from the Children’s Games series are public domain and can be watched and downloaded for free at francisalys.com/ category/childrens-games/.

PAINTINGS

Spanning three decades of the artist’s career, this group of small paintings is presented in dialogue with the Children’s Games film installation. Illuminated
by sharp beams of light, each work is a window revealing a place in time that punctuates the dark cinematic playground of the Children’s Games.

Al’s’s distinctive signature as a painter is to use oil on canvas mounted on small, solid wood panels only slightly larger than postcards. Painted between 1990 and 2024, these intimate works are titled after the cities Al’s travelled to, recording scenes witnessed by the artist in the public space. The eye is drawn to the figures – mostly children – at the heart of the canvases, portrayed both in groups and alone. Luscious landscapes and pared down urban compositions appear deceptively serene as world events unfold within these miniature scenes, often capturing the resilience of everyday life in zones of conflict or social unrest. “What does it mean to make art while Nimrud and Palmyra are being destroyed?” the artist writes. “What could a Belgian artist based in Mexico say about the situation in Afghanistan?” Between 2010 and 2014, Al’s travelled extensively in Afghanistan, witnessing the aftermath of Taliban rule, which had curtailed the simple freedoms of childhood.

From the narco-violence in Mexico to the COVID-19 pandemic, the paintings are directly inspired by drawings and sketches from Al’s’s notebooks, depicting the geopolitical contexts of the places he has travelled to. The artist bears witness through his drawings and paintings; they are “an attempt to coincide with the moment I am living,” he writes.


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