born in Belgium, 1959
lives and works in Mexico City


In 2002, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York underwent a major renovation and its operations temporarily moved to Queens. Francis Alÿs took advantage of it to photograph an urban procession,
marching from Manhattan to Queens and transporting masterpieces from the museum's collection, from the heart of the art world to its (relative) periphery. At the head of the procession, in a place of honor, was Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel, followed by Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1906-1907) and an elongated figure of a women by Alberto Giacometti.

The MoMA refused to lend the original works, so replicas appeared on the raised stages. In the case of the Bicycle Wheel, it really made no difference: It was another replica of the version that has no original in any case. On an improvised palanquin (a seat carried on poles), a gray-haired woman sits, looking like a high priest (the artist Kiki Smith), and a Peruvian band of wind instruments accompanies the procession. The atmosphere is one of a popular religious procession, with works of art instead of icons or sacred remains. Nothing is more natural than having the first readymade lead The Modern Procession, the procession of modernity.