FRANCIS ALŸS: TWO DECADES AFTER HIS PROJECT

The exhibition brings together archival material of various types such as documents, sketches, paintings, photographs, videos and texts that together construct the narrative of this work that lasted only a few hours, but is part of the mythology of contemporary art.

When Faith Moves Mountains is an event of political motivation and poetic expression, a monumental action conceived as an absurd project and executed by the power of collective enthusiasm. It is also a story that spreads like a rumor and multiplies from then until today.

Francis Alÿs. When Faith Moves Mountains, 2002. Two decades later, by Cuauhtémoc Medina.

On April 11, 2002, several hundred people joined forces to move a dune a few centimeters from its original location. The work, entitled When Faith Moves Mountains, was an action both heroic and absurd, evoking the immense cost of social progress while affirming the need for collective action and change. Conceived in the twilight of the Fujimori dictatorship, at the beginning of a new stage of democracy in Peru, When Faith Moves Mountains also proposed to mark an era of challenges and changes with a gesture that wanted to defy pessimism and despair, with a surprising gesture: a profane miracle.

Beyond this political sense, the action proposed a series of meditations and images. Carried out in the middle of the so-called “young towns” of the district of Ventanilla, the work reflected on the importance of the incessant settlements of immigrants from the interior of the country in the new configuration of Lima as a megalopolis.

The event was governed by a paradoxical slogan that criticized the dogmas of economic rationality: “Maximum effort, minimum result”. In addition, the work anticipated the importance that the proximity of the terms “politics” and “poetics” would have in Alÿs' work, as well as in the artistic research of the new century.

Two decades later, this exhibition explores the documentation of this action that has become a reference point for the social turn in the art of the 21st century and in the memory of contemporary art in Peru. Beyond reconstructing its history, we believe that the poetic voluntarism of this action is once again relevant in a turbulent moment of history.

Francis Alÿs was born in Belgium in 1959. He is an architect and urban planner. He moved to Mexico in 1986 to work with local non-governmental organizations. In 1990 he became interested in the visual arts, when his practice expanded to include techniques ranging from painting and drawing to video and photography. Although his studio is located in Mexico City, over the last 20 years Alÿs has carried out numerous projects in collaboration with local communities around the world, from South America to North Africa and the Middle East. One of the most representative projects was in Peru: When Faith Moves Mountains, Lima, 2002.