Born in 1959, Belgian-born Mexico-based conceptual artist who uses a variety of new and more-traditional media to evoke an often poetic sense of dislocation on social and political issues. Alÿs was raised in Herfelingen in Belgium, where his father was an appeals court justice. Trained as an architect at the Institute of Architecture in Tournai, Belgium (1978–83), and at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice(1983–86), Alÿs first travelled to Mexico City in 1986 as part of a Belgian effort to assist in rebuilding projects following the catastrophic earthquakes of 1985. Over the next several years, Alÿs moved toward art making, relishing its freedom and flexibility, and decided to remain in Mexico. For personal and political reasons and to further distance himself from Belgium and his previous activities, he adopted the surname “Alÿs” at that time.

His work emerges in the interdisciplinary space of art, architecture, and social practice. In 1986, Alÿs left behind his profession as an architect and relocated to Mexico City, where he lives and works.

He has created a diverse body of artwork and performance art that explores urban tensions and geopolitics. Employing a broad range of media, from painting to performance, his works examine the tension between politics and poetics, individual action and impotence. Alÿs commonly enacts paseos, walks that resist the subjection of common space.

Cyclical repetition and mechanics of progression and regression also inform the character of Alÿs’s actions and mythology—Alÿs contrasts geological and technological time through land-based and social practice that examine individual memory and collective mythology. Alÿs frequently engages rumour as a central tool in his practice, disseminating ephemeral, practice-based works through word-of-mouth and storytelling. Alÿs continues to add to his long-running film series Children’s Games (1999–present), which has amassed over 30 videos of children playing games in places in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mexico, Europe, and Hong Kong. The series reflects the artist’s habit of “making contact” with a different culture by seeing and filming how children play.

Alÿs summarized his modus operandi in the following way: “What I’m interested in rarely comes through at first sight. Then, by the time I’ve understood what I’m looking for, I’m already on the way out of making the project.”