Francis Alÿs: Kids Take Over

The Museum Ludwig presents Francis Alÿs—Kids Take Over, a remarkable exhibition in which children are the focus. The internationally acclaimed artist Francis Alÿs has had major solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, and numerous other museums in cities such as Houston, Shanghai, Mexico City, and Basel. His work was featured at the Venice Biennale in 2022 and in 2023 he received the Wolfgang Hahn Prize of the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig.

Thirty video works from Alÿs’s ongoing series Children’s Games, showing children from around the world at play, will be presented at the Museum Ludwig in dialogue with a group of paintings by the artist. The second part of the show is a children’s museum including a play zone, curated by children—Kids Take Over!

For the past twenty-five years, Francis Alÿs (*1959 in Antwerp, lives in Mexico City) has documented children’s games in a diverse range of countries. His videos depict children engaged in various activities such as jump rope, rolling tires, and a snowball fight, in different climate zones, in cities and in the countryside, in the steppes or in the forest. While some of the games are familiar to us, the rules of other games only gradually become apparent.

The universality of play is witnessed in the children’s concentration and anticipation, in their excitement and delight. Many of the films have a timeless quality due to the landscapes in which the children play and the analogue nature of their games. Other films are linked to a specific time, such as a game of tag played by children wearing masks during the COVID pandemic or more recent videos in which children in Ukraine integrate the war into their games. Sometimes geopolitical power structures and colonial inequalities are revealed, as in a film showing Congolese children using an old car tire to roll down a hill, which turns out to be the slag heap of a cobalt mine. Children’s Games attests to the creativity, resilience, and deep bond between children, whose games appear as utopian expressions of community and tradition beyond cultural and climatic differences.

Deputy director Rita Kersting: "We are very happy to present a show by Francis Alÿs, an extraordinary artist, whose work is loved by so many around the world. With his Children’s Games he emphasizes the perspectives of children and pulls the viewer into their playing between pleasure and tension. He initiated Kids Take Over as the second part of the project. Involving children to take the lead in the museum and supporting them to curate an exhibition from the collection stimulates democratic participation and is a wonderful learning experience for all sides."

Alÿs has turned over part of the exhibition space to fifty children from two local elementary schools in Cologne who have collaborated on a project that forms a special part of the show. These children—from class 3b at the Gemeinschaftsgrundschule in Köln-Lindweiler and class 6a/b at the Adolph Kolping-Hauptschule in Köln-Kalk – aged between eight and thirteen, like those featured in Children’s Games, have designed a play zone and a children’s museum. They have worked on the project for over a year, choosing artworks from the Museum Ludwig’s permanent collection for their own curated museum. This collaboration is an experiment, allowing the children to draw on their own perspectives to engage with paintings, sculptures, and video works and to invite others to do the same.

A new film in the Children’s Games series, made by Alÿs in Cologne with the participation of the local schoolchildren, will premiere in the exhibition in June.

Francis Alÿs—Kids Take Over is the largest outreach program the Museum Ludwig has ever undertaken. To encourage to visit the exhibition, over one hundred classes have been invited to visit the show. For many, it will be their first time to a museum, and their travel costs, often an obstacle for potential visitors, will be covered by the institution.

This exhibition will transform Museum Ludwig into a place where global and local perspectives merge. It invites visitors to discover the power of art and games, appreciate the perspectives of children—the voices of the future—and, through them, experience the museum in a new way.

Director Yilmaz Dziewior: "Watching how the children and young people see the museum, in particular our collection, and how they selected and presented works, was a real enrichment for the entire team and will continue to influence the Museum Ludwig in the future. Because art and culture are not just for adults."

Curators: Rita Kersting, Santi Grunewald.

The exhibition has been supported by the Landschaftsverband Rheinland (LVR) and the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig as well as by Russmedia, the Victor Rolff Stiftung, the Brigitte Wagner-Halswick Stiftung, the RheinEnergieStiftung Kultur, the Imhoff Stiftung, the MoBeyer Stiftung, and the Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation. Additional support has been generously provided by Galerie Peter Kilchmann.