The first of Dia's projects at the Hispanic Society was concieved by Belgian artist Francis Alÿs, who has long lived and worked in Mexico City. Commissioned by Dia and installed at the Hispanic Society's Beaux-Arts facility in Manhattan, Fabiola comprised almost three hundred portraits of the Christian Saint Fabiola, all of them copies of a lost original.

Francis Alÿs: Fabiola is on tour through August 2011.

Artist Biography

Francis Alÿs was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1959. He studied architecture at the Institut d’Architecture de Tournai, Belgium, and the Istituto di Architettura di Venezia, Italy. He began to work as an artist in 1990 after moving to Mexico City and had his first one-person exhibition there in 1991. Major exhibitions of his work have been presented at such venues as Art Angel, London (2005); Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany, and touring (2004); and the Musée d’art contemporain, Avignon, France (2004). He participated in the Venice Biennial in 2007 and 2001 and the Carnegie International in 2004. Alÿs lives and works in Mexico City and London.