Celebrated for his artworks that engage with some of today’s most relevant and urgent social issues, Belgian-Mexican artist Francis Alÿs (b. 1959) returns to the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) this winter with a solo exhibition of over 300 works. A Story of Negotiation features three of the artist’s most important videoworks from the last decade, each accompanied by a selection of Alÿs’ paintings, drawings and sculptures. Fascinated by how children create their own worlds, Alÿs takes an approach that is equally poetic and political, often drawing on familiar childhood games to make sense of the world’s larger social issues, including migration patterns, contemporary warfare and shifting borders. The exhibition opens on Dec. 8, 2016 and runs to April 2, 2017.

Organized in conjunction with the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City and making its only Canadian stop in Toronto, A Story of Negotiation is curated by Mexican curator and historian Cuauhtémoc Medina, and coordinated at the AGO by Kitty Scott, Carol and Morton Rapp Curator, Modern & Contemporary Art.

Situated in the fifth floor of the AGO’s Contemporary Tower, the exhibition is organized around three films: Tornado (2000–10), a depiction of the artist’s encounters with Mexico’s “dust devils”; Don’t Cross the Bridge Before You Get to the River (2008), an imagining of a bridge across the Strait of Gibraltar, which separates Africa and Europe; and REEL-UNREEL (2011), a film set in Kabul whose narrative begins in the children’s game of hoop and stick. Each of these large-scale video works is amplified by a selection of small paintings and drawings.

“Some of the issues and themes addressed in Francis Alys’s paintings are highly relevant to the contemporary migrant experience,” says Kitty Scott. “In translating his own experiences, he invites us to join a global conversation.”

Francis Alÿs: A Story of Negotiation is created by Francis Alÿs in collaboration with Emilio Rivera, Daniel Toxqui, Julien Devaux, Elena Pardo, Rafael Ortega, Felix Blume and Raul Ortega. It is organized by the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo and the Fundación Olga y Rufino Tamayo, A.C.