Francis Alÿs. Fabiola

On Saturday, July 7th, Museo Amparo inaugurated the exhibition Francis Alÿs. Fabiola, presented in the museum's Colonial Art and Nineteenth Century galleries. The exhibition features more than four hundred images of St. Fabiola, acquired over more than a decade by Francis Alÿs, the Belgian artist settled in Mexico.

The collection, where every work is a hand-made reproduction of an original painted by the academic artist Jean-Jacques Henner in 1885, displays at once a disconcerting homogeneity. As curator Lynne Cook notes, the exhibition poses historical and aesthetic questions generally associated with the great masters of the past, and touches upon essential art topics such as authorship, iconography, function, originality, and collecting, among others. Although at first glance the works appear monotonously similar, on closer examination many differences appear. In general, they encompass a broad range with variations that go from the media used—oil painting, embroidery, enamel, and, in a particularly memorable instance, seeds and beans—to the dazzling variety of technical skill displayed by their creators, most being the work of amateurs.

Francis Alÿs. Fabiola reaches Puebla after a long tour in the US, England, Spain, Switzerland, and Peru, offering an opportunity for the Mexican public to enjoy this interesting project.

The show was commissioned by New York's Dia Art Foundation and was curated by Lynne Cooke. Its travel itinerary in Latin America was coordinated by Tatiana Cuevas with the support of David Zwirner Gallery, in New York.

Francis Alÿs
Fabiola
Kuratorin: Lynne Cooke