Francis Alys’ refreshing observations on children’s play across the world

Since 1999, Mexico-based artist Francis Alys (born 1959) has been documenting children at play in countries across the globe, from rock paper scissors in Mexico City to knucklebones in Kathmandu, Nepal, to hopscotch in a Yezidi refugee camp in Iraq. Amid shouts of laughter and goodnatured bickering, the subjects of Alys’ series represent the universality of youthful play and imagination even in politically contentious environments.

Children’s Games is a unique record of humanity through its youngest members, serving as a testament to the time in a person’s life where, despite everything, the biggest conflict was still whether someone had cheated at musical chairs. This book collects Alys’ social project of films, performative actions, drawings, documents and paintings into a single publication for the first time, with contributions by curator and art historian Cuauhtemoc Medina and ethnographer and filmmaker David MacDougall.