Football is a source of passion, pleasure, anxiety and shared connection, bringing people together across genders, ages and social classes. Few other activities reveal such a strong human attachment to play. Johan Huizinga explored our compelling need to participate in or watch games in his book Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Indeed, he argued that Homo Ludens describes our species more aptly than Homo sapiens. Football undoubtedly embodies this attachment to play more fully than any other activity.
This group exhibition invites visual artists to engage with football. Artists embracing a game that arouses such intense passions that some readily compare it to a religion is nothing new. Many artists, including Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Magritte and Hockney, have taken an interest in football. The subject has also inspired several international exhibitions, yet remains unexplored in this form in Morocco.
Art is only a game. This assertion takes on dizzying implications in an exhibition devoted to football, as the theme may lead artists to reflect on their own practice. In football, there is a winner and a loser. Does art not resemble a challenging match between the artist and their work? To borrow the language of football, an artist who does not break a sweat, who does not commit wholeheartedly to their work, will rarely deliver a performance—or an artwork—that captivates spectators. Can losing mean winning? As Marcel Duchamp said, “In art, there is no winner.” In football, there always is one.
