circleThe expression “child’s play” is used to suggest something is simple, but the ways children entertain themselves are often the result of great ingenuity and resourcefulness. For more than 20 years, Belgian-born, Mexico-based artist Francis Alÿs has traveled the world capturing children’s games, some of which are universal, and others that have developed in response to conflict, poverty, and pandemics.
In his upcoming exhibition Ricochettes, Alice will transform London’s brutalist Barbican into a vibrant cinematic playground, featuring scenes of kite flying in Afghanistan, skipping rope in Hong Kong, throwing stones on the beaches of Morocco and spinning until a stone falls in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Visitors will encounter a vibrant cacophony of around 30 films from Alice’s ongoing “Children’s Games” series, some of which have previously been screened at the Belgian Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale.
“The coexistence of many games creates the atmosphere of a schoolyard, with kids running around, screaming, laughing,” says Alice, whose work includes film, painting, drawing and animation. “It’s loud. That’s the atmosphere we want. This is the reality of children’s play. You have to be immersed in their world.”
At each venue, the artist adds a new game he has filmed in that country: here he made three films of children playing in East London: Granny’s Footprints, The Horseshoe War and Kids Doodle with Chalk on the Asphalt. Alice conceived the exhibition as two “moments”. The darkened lower level is lined with a row of screens of different sizes projecting the games. Dotted on the walls, Alice’s small oil paintings are reminiscent of Mexican retablos and religious works. Beginning with sketches on location, these atmospheric paintings frequently evoke the film’s wider geopolitical setting, depicting protagonists dwarfed in comparison to their surrounding environments.
The upper floor has two dedicated playrooms—one with projected lighting for shadow play, the other with a low swivel stool—and a new animated film series. Sparsely displayed, these black-and-white, hand-drawn animations tie in with the theme of play, focusing on children’s individual actions, like foot shaking, and hand games, like thumb wars and finger walking.
Born in Antwerp in 1959, Alice initially trained as an architect before moving to Mexico in 1986 to work for local non-governmental organisations and eventually becoming part of the nascent contemporary art scene there. Over a career spanning four decades, she has gained acclaim for her allegorical films that chronicle the absurdities of life with lyricism and wry humour. In one 1997 film, she spent nine hours melting a block of ice in a busy Mexico City street. Paradox of Practice 1 (Making something sometimes produces nothing)2004 film Green LineAllis walked 15 miles through Jerusalem with a can of leaky green paint, tracing the tense armistice line designated at the end of the Arab-Israeli war in 1948. He also organized fantastical mass actions, like moving a few inches of sand dunes in Peru with a team of volunteers with shovels, for a 2002 film. When faith moves mountains.
But for the past 15 years, Alice has stepped back from acting in his films, inviting his children to be the protagonists. “It’s basically a question of age,” he says. “There’s a moment when I want to give my voice to the next generation.” Since 1999, he has made 47 films in 15 countries, each documenting one game. “A lot of my work is inspired by my own childhood games, a very free childhood in the Belgian countryside, where we explored all kinds of worlds,” he says. He adds that his own children (ages 24, 4 and 2) influenced his decision to “see the world they have discovered and inherited from us.” They are “very accurate critics of clarity, repetition and unnecessary material,” but the younger two are only just beginning to understand his films. His children are his first audience. “In the end, it’s about them. And if they don’t recognize themselves, I’ve failed.”
What is the appeal of play? “Play is essential. “Theatre is a place for children to enter the adult world, which they often imitate through games,” says Alice. Theatre is also a place for realizing dreams and imagining alternative futures, as poignantly demonstrated by a group of children playing a game of soccer without a ball in Mosul, Iraq, a few days after the liberation. Children’s Games #19: Haram Football – “Haram” refers to the fact that football was banned under the rule of the Islamic State.
Many of the games Alice documents have similar counterparts around the world, often using objects found on the streets. In Havana, Cuba, The film crew noticed “chappita,” in which children use stones to flatten bottle caps. They thread them on a string and spin them wildly, trying to cut their opponent’s string. Chapita bears similarities to horse chestnuts, which are banned in many British schools. “What strikes me about this game is its cross-cultural aspect,” says Alice. The artist filmed Mexican children playing rock-paper-scissors, Nepali children playing “knucklebones” or jacks, and young people from Iraq’s Shariah refugee camp playing hopscotch.
The films are the same length as the games, usually between three and eight minutes, and rarely include subtitles to translate the kids’ chatter. “Just by watching the video, you should be able to understand the basic rules of the game,” says Alice. Though it focuses on the rituals of play, the films inevitably reflect the world the children inhabit: bullet-riddled houses, bomb-ravaged streets, giant mine slag heaps, cities with skyscrapers. Alice doesn’t choose the locations himself; they are decided by those invited to film. The project is starting to take on an “ethnographic dimension,” but that wasn’t his original intention, he says, and his approach is far from scientific.
Earning the kids’ trust is fundamental to filming them. Alice attributes their success to “the kids feeling that we take their game very seriously.” He and his crew inevitably get involved. “The kids lead, and you adapt to it, rather than directing them,” says Alice. “When they’re engaged, they’re fantastic and give more than you expect. When they get bored, you give up. There’s no fudging or pretending. It’s a very clear contract.”
Alice’s deeply human films and paintings from places like Ukraine, Afghanistan and Iraq (where he accompanied Kurdish Peshmerga forces as an artist-observer in 2016) convey the extraordinary resilience of children in the face of trauma, with play being a key coping mechanism. “Adults process those experiences with words, but kids process them with games,” he says. In his film Children of Afghanistan, made last year, Kids Games #39: ParoleUkrainian children in military uniforms with toy guns stop cars and ask for a password. The game, based on the ancient custom of shibboleth, is designed to flush out Russian spies, as the password, “paryanitsiya,” cannot be pronounced correctly by Russians. Similarly, the 2024 painting Kyiv, Ukraine Depicting a group of children jumping into a massive crater caused by a missile, Alice embodies the children’s extraordinary ability to reshape the reality around them in order to survive.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, children’s inventiveness has reached new heights, with countless variations of “tag” being created to adapt to the changed circumstances (Alice found a map with 50 tag versions around the world). “Children’s Game #25: Contagio” (2021) documents the Mexican version, in which a child designated as the “oni” wears a red face mask and infects others by playing tag, making them the contagion, and the last child remaining shouts “survivor.”
But the pandemic has accelerated the disappearance of many outdoor games, making Alice realise the need for some kind of archive. The lure of the internet, increased car intrusion into public spaces, and parental fears about letting their kids play outside have all contributed to the decline of such activities. “I think we’re living through a transition right now,” Alice says. “It’s becoming important to register these games while they’re still available for spontaneous play.”
The children’s film has received a tremendous response from the public wherever it is screened. The film is available to watch for free. Alÿs website And they’re not for sale. “I have a secret plan: I sell my paintings and use the money to travel and do films,” Alice explained at a recent children’s workshop in London. Some might argue that the series paints a optimistic picture of childhood, since playgrounds can also be places of bullying, but Alice says: “I never encountered bullying or anything like that while filming. There was some bullying, either by myself or among the children, but it was mostly about excluding someone from a game or being excluded.”
These mini-documentaries chart children’s journeys across the world. Witness the expressions of cunning, excitement, and disappointment on their faces as they resolve differences, cooperate, and learn to win and lose. There’s something powerful and inspiring about the way these activities and rituals have been passed down orally for generations, crisscrossing oceans, mountains, and deserts, highlighting commonalities. Building this living archive of play is Alice’s mission. “What I do best today is what may change tomorrow,” he says. “It’s documenting kids and learning from them.”
