Untitled
Francis Alÿs
Belgian, born 1959
2002
A color photograph that records Alÿs’s 2002 performative project in which hundreds of volunteers formed a long human line to shovel and nudge a sand dune—a quiet, collective gesture staged by the artist.
What strikes you is a thin, almost calligraphic line of people cutting across a vast, sun‑bleached desert, their white shirts and the dust they kick up turning the action into a tremulous mark on the landscape.
The image reframes art as organized human labor and poetic futility, helping to define a strand of socially engaged performance that uses small, symbolic actions to reveal political and communal possibilities.
Medium
Color photograph
Dimensions
8 x 10" (20.3 x 25.4 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of The Speyer Family Foundation, Kathy and Richard S. Fuld, Jr., Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Anna Marie and Robert F. Shapiro, The Julia Stoschek Foundation, Düsseldorf, and Committee on Media Funds
Accession
208.2007.56
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
