Song for Lupita

Francis Alÿs’ animated film brings us face to face with a woman with simplified outlines who repeats the same gesture ad infinitum: holding a transparent glass in each hand, she successively pours water from one to the other. Accompanied by the song Mañana, mañana (Tomorrow, Tomorrow), the video shows the pointless act’s poetry and procrastination with disarming simplicity.

The 1998 animated film Song for Lupita is probably one of Alÿs' sweetest works. Reflecting hope for the future, it stresses the vanity of effort and celebrates the notion of process and perpetual reconsideration in a society dominated by productivism that values only the finished act. 

Alÿs’ animated film Song for Lupita, which is in the Pinault Collection, was shown during the 2009 exhibition "Un certain état du monde ?" (“A Certain State of the World?”) at the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow.