Exhibition: 11.10.2017 – 04.02.2018
“Nous sommes Foot” – group exhibition with PSJM
LOCATION: MUCEM, 7 Prom. Robert Laffont, 13002 Marseille/ France
Exhibition WEBSITE |Museum WEBSITE
Curated by Florent Molle.
The exhibition “nous sommes Foot” represents the international importance of football by showing more than 300 objects. Football connects people so much that it is almost appropriate to assign this sport with adjectives such as “social”, “cultural” or “political”. In the streets of Paris or Marseille, in the ports of Istanbul or Athens, in the suburbs of Algiers or on the beaches of Malaga, the popularity of football is second to none. Nevertheless, football sometimes embodies the opposite: division, violence, racism and fanaticism.
Whether in the underprivileged cities of Marseille, in the posts of Istanbul or Athen, in the suburbs of Algier or on the beaches of Malaga, football, whose popularity is unmatched, has the capacity to make living together the habitants of the Mediterranean. On the contrary, this sport also reflects the image of a Mediterranean crossed by social cleavages, violence, racism and fanaticism. If it remains the embodiment of meritocratic ideal, football is also a revealer of the global economic imbalances. Faced with the extraordinary financial, stakes represented by the “football business”, the cases of frauds multiply, during the matches as during the attribute of the major competitions. The outcome of the debate on the professionalization of football, initiated by Jules Rimet, founder of the World Cup, and Pierre de Coubertin, creator of Olympus, has changed the face of this sport.
In recent history, the stands of sport arenas have been places of confrontation and propaganda. They also echoed citizen commitments from players and supporters who took over football to return to the source of the game and defend the normal and humanist values it carries, which are having respect for the rules and the opponent, as well as self-surpassing, solidarity and team spirit. Thus, football offers us a magnifying mirror of the moral values and political ideologies of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is a revelation of our societies, a reflection of what is darker and more luminous.
Note: The Work by PSJM got censored one week after the opening and was deleted from the exhibition.
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