MOTHER SOCCER

Mother Soccer
2025 · Inverted footballs, acrylic paint, Moncler ribbons · pair: 40 × 20 × 10 cm, ribbons of variable length

Two footballs, turned inside out and painted pink, hang from the ceiling on Moncler ribbons. Their valves sit where the nipples would be. A football is made to be kicked and follows strict rules. Turned inside out, it can no longer be played, and it becomes a body part instead.

The work comes to life when someone steps behind it. The breasts then hang at their own chest height, and the visitor becomes part of the image. People laugh, pose and take photos of each other. That interaction is the real game, and in it football, motherhood and fashion meet, each with its own fixed ideas about the female body. Louise Bourgeois is not far away: in A Banquet / A Fashion Show of Body Parts (1978) she also put body parts on as costumes.

I made Mother Soccer for the UEFA Women’s EURO 2025 in Switzerland. It was first shown in Sion as part of EUROFEMININ2025. In 2026 it was shown again in Lucerne, in the group exhibition Play as Practice – Part I. The exhibition starts from a simple thought: at a time when everything has to be useful, fast and serious, play is a form of freedom.

Exhibitions
2025 · EUROFEMININ2025, Maison Platea, Sion, during the UEFA Women’s EURO 2025 (initiated by Agnès Guhl)
2026 · Play as Practice – Part I, MakeArt Room, Lucerne, curated by Emily Hildebrand and Ximena Gomez Della Valle

Press
Arno Renggli, «Das Spiel führt zu Entdeckungen», Luzerner Zeitung, 3 November 2026, p. 14, illustrated with Mother Soccer