Seven Artworks to Catch Up On During the FIFA World Cup

There is no winner in Paul Pfeiffer’s video Jerusalem, which repurposes footage from the 1966 World Cup final in which the United Kingdom claimed victory over West Germany with a 4–2 win. Echoing the exact length of a match, the 90-minute work, commissioned by London-based art organization Artangel, turns London’s famed Wembley Stadium into a canvas for a potpourri of smeared bodies. The digitally manipulated black-and-white footage echoes with an invisible crowd’s chants, and a smiling Queen Elizabeth II makes an appearance. The spectral players materialize and vanish with an ethereal force while Pfeiffer, who has also appropriated footage of basketball games and boxing matches in his multimedia practice, conducts a thrilling visual symphony on power and politics.

Jerusalem can be viewed online here.

Obsession, fandom, and martyrdom linger in Zidane, a 21st Century Portrait, a collaborative video installation by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno. Another 90-minute work, the two-channel display exclusively follows Zinedine Zidane in a match between Real Madrid and Villareal on April 23, 2005, at Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu Stadium. The French Algerian soccer legend who held the midfield attacking position for Real Madrid is captured in a whirlwind—moments of adrenalin-fueled action punctuated by footage of Zidane talking to his teammates or strategizing. Shot by 17 cameras, the immersive installation never blinks while documenting the player’s turbulent emotional palette.

Zidane, a 21st Century Portrait can be seen at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach through July 19.

Labor, race, and identity are social issues inseparable from soccer, particularly in Europe and Latin America, not unlike basketball or boxing in the United States. The soccer pitch is often promoted as an aspirational goal for young people from disenfranchised communities whose bodies and backgrounds become points of public scrutiny. Lucia Hierro’s larger-than-life sculptures of everyday commercial goods have earned the New York–based artist a solo exhibition at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. For the IMAZ Foundation’s “Chapter One” exhibition and silent auction, Hierro created a soccer ball made out of nylon in colors reminiscent of the red-white-blue bags commonly used in Asia to contain groceries. Mundane and disposable, the bags resonate with movement, relentless labor, and repetition, and in Hierro’s playful and provoking interpretation, the visual statement also celebrates collectivity and communal joy.

Untitled is viewable here.

The same IMAZ auction, which benefits the Quito-based, housing-focused organization Raíz-Caemba, additionally features the New York–based artist Jamel Robinson, whose participation similarly explores harsher aspects of soccer as a spectacle. A ball sliced in half is almost unrecognizable with its red, white, and black outer skin onto which the letters in the word free are scattered. Eleven gold-colored nails in the shape of a cross pierce the torched rice that fills the ball. Robinson, who also appropriates elements from boxing in his otherwise abstract practice, completes the work with two paint-mixing sticks amid this configuration, building a parallel between artist and athlete.

Free by Fire is viewable here.

Speed is embodied in Melissa McGill’s contribution to The Art of the Game, a public art program presented ARTS 14C in partnership with the NYNJ Host Committee for the 2026 World Cup. The Beacon, New York–based artist, whose new work Marea, about Venice’s impending crisis due to water level rise, is currently on view in La Serenissima, here wraps an entire massive ball with a sea surface. Glistening in the sunlight and dancing with the rhythm of the waves, the imagery feels kinetic, almost in motion. The artist utilizes a trompe-l’œil effect to draw attention to the ways the seas suffer from climate change, a statement elevated by the sculpture’s positioning on the Hudson River at Hoboken’s Maxwell Place Park.

The Art of the Game is on view through July 19.

Likewise among the 23 larger-than-life soccer ball sculptures in The Art of the Game, which supports the nonprofit ARTS 14C through an auctioning partnership with Christie’s, is the contribution of Dominican–born painter Bony Ramirez, whose exuberantly outlandish depictions of island life complicate notions of beauty and tourism through implications of extraction and exploitation. The natural world’s own rhythm, which often backdrops the New York–based artist’s paintings of distorted bodies with loose gender signifiers, here wraps around a massive ball located at the MetLife Stadium. Red vines creep over the surface like blood vessels, and faces with perplexed expressions and comical features appear on the hexagons.

The Art of the Game is on view through July 19.

The massive impact of soccer as a global phenomenon partially stems from its nonhierarchical quality: After all, all you need is a ball for a match between two teams. From the favelas of São Paulo to the suburbs of London, youth has access and autonomy in almost any open field. Lyndon J. Barrois, Sr.’s current exhibition, “Fútbol Is Life,” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, celebrates the egalitarian nature of the game with its main material, gum wrappers. The celebrated animator, visual‑effects artist, and art collector utilizes this disposable, mundane material, as well as some paint and glue, to embody both male and female players in vibrant colors and energetic gestures. The result is a range of stop-motion videos and miniature or life-size sculptures, including those of star players such as Lionel Messi and Marta.

“Fútbol Is Life” is on view at LACMA through July 26.