2023 Wolfgang Hahn Prize: Francis Alÿs
Award ceremony and presentation: November 17, 6:00 p.m.
Francis Alÿs receives the 2023 Wolfgang Hahn Prize from the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig. The Mexico City–based artist (b. 1959 in Antwerp) studied architecture and urban planning and began working for local NGOs there in 1986, before starting his artistic career in 1990. His diverse work includes painting, drawing, installations, video, photography, and performances, and has been shown in numerous exhibitions around the world, including the Belgian Pavilion at the fifty-ninth Venice Biennale (2022) and DOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel/Kabul (2013).
Francis Alÿs’s unique artistic position is particularly evident in the way he observes our society. Using the simplest of artistic gestures, he laconically relates complex social realities, making contradictions of political and cultural regimes tangible as well as those of his own aesthetic productions. His interventions in real situations, in which he frequently appears as an actor, subtly refer to issues such as migration, demarcations, and the consequences of globalization. The fact that his works often take the form of enactments of the absurdity of everyday life makes their reception an entertaining intellectual delight.
Curator: Yilmaz Dziewior