In ‘Prolongations’, M’barka Amor, Ouassila Arras and Dalila Dalléas Bouzar turn the football pitch into a charged site of memory, racial politics and embodied resistance, tracing the tensions between aspiration, violence and survival through painting, textiles, installation and sculpture.
1 July 2026
Sport has long functioned as a theatre for collective fantasy: a space onto which nations, communities and individuals project desire, belonging and power. In ‘Prolongations’, currently on view at the Institut des Cultures d’Islam in Paris, artists M’barka Amor, Ouassila Arras, and Dalila Dalléas Bouzar approach the football field not as spectacle, but as a contested terrain shaped by exhaustion, exclusion and the fragile possibility of transformation. Developed through an ongoing dialogue between the three artists and curator Horya Makhlouf, the exhibition brings together intimate histories and political realities, moving between locker rooms and stadium stands, private memory and public performance. The artists reflect on the burden placed on racialised bodies, the limits of visibility, and the ways material, gesture and form can hold what dominant narratives refuse to see.
‘Prolongations’ grows out of a shared dialogue between you. How did working together shape or challenge your individual practices?
Dalila Dalléas Bouzar: I wouldn’t call it a collaboration, as we each worked independently. As far as I’m concerned, I’d say that the theme of football shifted my perspective on the male body. That was a welcome change, and I feel it gave my work a fresh impetus.
M’barka Amor : This collaboration took shape as a space for listening and exploration. Working together led us to step outside our individual habits, to accept areas of uncertainty, and to leave certain intentions open-ended. Dialogue acted as a catalyst: it brought shared concerns to light whilst highlighting our differences in pace, gestures and forms. Rather than smoothing over these differences, we chose to embrace them, which enriched our practices by making them more porous and open.
Ouassila Arras : For me, this collaboration was a way of bringing to the surface a subject that had long remained contained, almost silent. The dialogue with the other person created a space of trust where certain personal intuitions were able to take shape and become visible. Working on ‘Prolongations’ also led me to shift my practice: moving away from a purely intimate gesture towards a shared reflection, where narratives, memories and sensibilities respond to one another. This challenged the way I construct forms and images, because I was no longer working solely from my own perspective, but was constantly attuned to the exchange and resonance between our worlds. Ultimately, this collaboration acted as an extension—a ‘prolongation’, as it were—of something that already existed within me, but which needed this encounter to reveal itself fully.
The exhibition draws on sport as both aspiration and limitation. How do you approach this tension in your work?
Dalila : I addressed this tension by highlighting the scars of racism, but also by attempting to show a path towards grace through painting and embroidery.
M’barka : Football, in particular, is seen as a space for self-expression, discipline and pushing one’s limits, but also as a normative system that imposes constraints on the body. Added to this is a more violent reality: black and Arab male footballers (see Vinicius Junior) are both highly visible and exposed to persistent forms of racism, whether explicit or systemic. This dimension reveals the extent to which the meritocratic ideal of sport is permeated by structural inequalities. I have been interested in this ambivalence: what drives transformation can also constrain, assign and exclude. In my work, this tension manifests itself in forms that oscillate between momentum and hindrance, between movement and immobilisation, between power and vulnerability caught up in dynamics of projection but also of control.
Ouassila : The football field is often portrayed as a space governed by shared rules, a place where everyone is theoretically on an equal footing. But in reality, it functions as a microcosm of society. We find the same hierarchies, the same mechanisms of control, and the same fantasies projected onto certain bodies. The Arab body, in particular, is constantly judged before it is even heard. It is expected to display strength, endurance, rage, and sometimes even a form of controlled savagery, but rarely complexity, fragility or thought. It must perform to be accepted, and even when it succeeds, its belonging remains conditional. The pitch thus becomes a space where a broader question is replayed: under what conditions do certain bodies have the right to occupy the collective space? In my work, I am interested in this particular kind of fatigue. The fatigue of having to represent more than just oneself. The fatigue of bodies that carry a social and political memory the moment they appear in the public sphere. On a sports field, just as in society, the Arab body is often caught between extreme visibility and erasure: overexposed when it causes discomfort, invisible when it suffers. Hagra speaks specifically of this everyday violence, of this humiliation that does not always take the form of blows, but of looks, arbitrary decisions, and the roles assigned to people. Marques blanches explores the mark left by this pressure on bodies: what they absorb, what they keep silent, and what they ultimately bear physically. And Tissus de mensonges questions the narratives we construct around integration, merit or sporting success, even as certain bodies are constantly required to prove their legitimacy. I’m interested in sport because it reveals something very raw: the way a society views bodies that it considers both desirable and threatening. The football pitch thus becomes a political arena. A place where not only performance is at stake, but also the possibility of living with dignity.
The body appears as a site of pressure, endurance and projection. What draws you to these themes?
Dalila : The body is all of these things at once. It is what allows us to be alive, yet it also becomes the object of our oppression. We must liberate our bodies in order to liberate ourselves, yet it is through the body that liberation comes. It is our infinite vessel, enabling us to traverse the universe and time.
M’barka : The body is a point where the personal and the political converge. It bears the marks of social norms, cultural heritage and personal experiences. I am particularly drawn to its ability to absorb tensions whilst remaining a space of resistance and transformation.
Ouassila : I believe I start with the body because it is the first domain over which power is exercised. Even before speech, even before narrative, there is the way in which a body is looked at, scrutinised, disciplined. Some bodies move through the world with a sense of self- evidence; others always arrive already laden with representations, fears and social fantasies. The Arab, North African, immigrant or working-class body, especially when it comes from the outskirts, often carries a burden that exceeds its own capacity. It becomes a projection screen. We project onto it masculinity, threat, failure, sometimes exoticism, sometimes spectacular success, but rarely simple humanity. This overload creates constant tension: one must hold on, take the blows, perform, restrain oneself. What interests me is this imposed endurance. Not the heroic endurance portrayed in mainstream narratives, but that of bodies that survive quietly. Bodies that learn from a very early age to absorb social violence, to transform humiliation into discipline, and silence into inner resistance. In my pieces, the body isn’t necessarily depicted directly, but it is everywhere in the material. In the folds, the marks, the tensions in the fabric, the traces left by gestures. Marques blanches speaks of what remains imprinted even when one tries to erase it. Hagra names this structural violence that eventually comes to inhabit bodies from within. And Tissus de mensonges explores the layers of narrative we impose: stories of merit, integration and success, which often mask far more brutal realities. I also believe that the body is a repository of memory. A memory that does not necessarily stem from official records, but from postures, reflexes and inherited weariness. Fanon wrote that certain bodies are constantly reduced to their condition in the eyes of others. That sentence continues to resonate with me. Because it says something essential: certain bodies can never simply be present in the world. They must always negotiate their right to exist.
Memory and personal histories are central to your practices. How do you work with these materials to question dominant narratives?
Dalila : In my case, that’s not quite right. The memory is still there, but it’s as if it’s in my subconscious. And for my part, I keep my personal stories at a distance. I paint faces and bodies that, to me, are the very fabric of the world.
M’barka : I have approached memory as a fragmentary, subjective and sometimes contradictory material. Drawing on personal accounts, inherited traditions and private archives, I have sought to bring to light stories that lie outside the dominant narratives. The aim is not to produce a unified counter-narrative, but rather to multiply perspectives, allowing discordant voices to coexist and thereby adding complexity to our understanding of history.
Ouassila : I do not treat memory as something static or nostalgic. What interests me is memory as a field of tension. A fragmented memory, sometimes suppressed, sometimes shameful, which nevertheless continues to live on in bodies, in gestures, in family silences. Dominant narratives always produce a hierarchy of lives: some lives become visible, tellable, worthy of archiving; others remain confined to the margins or reduced to clichés. When you come from families with a working-class immigrant background and from the suburbs, you often inherit stories marked by erasure. Not because they do not exist, but because we were taught that they had no historical or aesthetic value. My work, then, consists of taking these fragments—a material, a popular expression, a physical trace, a fabric, a sense of weariness, a humiliation—and treating them as political elements in their own right. I seek less to illustrate a story than to convey what these stories evoke in people’s bodies and imaginations. In Hagra, for example, I start with a word that already embodies a collective experience of social and institutional contempt. This word circulates in neighbourhoods, within families, and in popular anger, yet it remains almost entirely absent from official discourse. Bringing it into the realm of art is, in itself, a way of shifting a boundary: it is a way of saying that this experience deserves to be considered, observed and heard. In Marques Blanches, I explore the themes of traces and erasure. Who leaves their mark on history? Which bodies are erased whilst still bearing the scars of that disappearance? And in Tissus de mensonges, I examine the fabricated narratives surrounding assimilation, success or respectability, which often serve to mask far deeper forms of violence. I believe that art can serve to crack open the smooth, dominant narratives. To reintroduce turmoil, contradiction, and memories that spill over. Not to demand a place within the dominant narrative, but to show that this narrative has, in fact, been built upon organised acts of forgetting.
The works move between intimate spaces and public arenas. How do you think about this shift in scale and visibility?
M’barka : This shift from one scale to another is essential. I see these movements as experiences offered to visitors so that they can sense these ‘intimate/public’ dimensions. What is on display is never fully revealed, and what remains hidden continues to exert its influence in the background.
Ouassila : This transition between the private and the public lies at the heart of my work, because for many people from working-class and immigrant backgrounds, the private sphere has never been entirely shielded from the political. Power relations already permeate family spaces, bodies, ways of speaking, of holding oneself, of dreaming. What is considered “private” for some very quickly becomes public for others. Arab, Muslim and immigrant bodies are constantly exposed to the social gaze: how they dress, speak, love and occupy space. There is a pervasive surveillance that transforms deeply personal experiences into subjects of collective debate. In my work, I try precisely to shift this exposure. To regain control of the gaze. When I use materials linked to textiles, traces, wear and tear, or family memory, I often start from something very intimate. But once in the exhibition space, these elements change scale: they become political forms. Not because they represent an entire community, but because they tell the story of how power is embedded in ordinary lives. This shift in visibility also interests me because it creates a tension. What happens when a silent pain, a social shame or a marginalised memory enters an art institution? What becomes audible, and what still resists? In Hagra, for example, there is this shift of a common, almost everyday word into an institutional space. This creates a sense of friction. With Marques blanches and Tissus de mensonges, I am also exploring the idea that intimate traces can reveal much broader structures: mechanisms of erasure, control, and imposed respectability. I am not seeking to make the intimate “universal” in the conventional sense of the term. On the contrary, I want to preserve what is situated, conflictual and socially charged about it. Because it is often in these areas that dominant narratives begin to crack.
Ideas of resistance and adaptation run throughout the exhibition. How do these strategies take shape in your work?
Dalila : Resistance, yes; adaptation, no. Resistance in the sense of being aware of history and of what I represent in Europe: a ‘subaltern’ in the eyes of Europeans. This resistance takes the form of painting—a profoundly European medium—and portraiture, creating new representations. I do not adapt.
M’barka : Resilience and adaptation are evident in both form and process. They manifest themselves in materials that bend, transform or deteriorate, but also in repetitive gestures, attempts and adjustments. Rather than depicting these concepts directly, I have sought to bring them to life through situations in which something holds firm, gives way or reconfigures itself.
Ouassila : In my practice, resistance is neither a slogan nor a heroic stance. It is something much more subtle, sometimes almost invisible: a way of holding one’s ground in a world that constantly demands you shift, adapt, and make yourself legible according to its own categories. I come from a background where adaptation is a compulsory skill. Learning to read people’s expressions, to anticipate expectations, to adjust one’s presence. But this adaptation is never neutral: it leaves its mark, it is exhausting, and it also produces forms of dissociation. It is within this space that I situate my work. For me, resistance isn’t necessarily about direct confrontation. Sometimes it means slowing things down, diverting or shifting the narratives that are imposed on us. It means refusing to accept that certain bodies can only be understood through the lens of violence, performance or suspicion. It means reintroducing complexity where there is oversimplification. I often think about the idea that certain bodies are always already in a state of constant adjustment. They must adapt to institutions, public spaces and social expectations, whilst carrying a memory that does not fit within these frameworks. This tension becomes a material. It permeates gestures, the choice of materials, and the ways in which an image or a form is constructed. What I’m trying to do is work with this tension without seeking to resolve it. To let what it produces emerge: vulnerabilities, moments of imbalance, instances where something resists without necessarily declaring itself as resistance. There are also adaptations that are survival strategies, and these must not be confused with submission. They are shaped by very concrete power dynamics, and they reveal something about the way in which certain bodies are constantly forced to adapt in order to exist. Fanon clearly shows that bodies do not merely internalise domination: they collide with it, they fracture under it, and sometimes they re-enact it in spite of themselves. What interests me is not an idea of ‘resilience’ that is self-contained or placated, but that unstable moment where survival also involves contradictions, pent-up anger, and forced adjustments. In my practice, I do not seek to resolve these tensions. Rather, I seek to make them visible without romanticising or softening them. Because these coping strategies are never neutral: They are the product of very real power dynamics, and they reveal something about the way in which certain bodies are constantly forced to adapt in order to survive.
Your materials range from textiles and ceramics to drawing and installation. How do these choices support the stories you want to tell?
Dalila : You’re forgetting that painting is different from drawing!
M’barka : Each material carries its own memory and a particular symbolic significance. Textiles evoke care and transmission, but also constraint; ceramics engage with fragility and transformation; sound allows for a form of immediacy and notation. By combining these mediums, I have sought to construct narratives that go beyond a purely documentary or illustrative interpretation. The material becomes a language capable of bringing memories, tensions and imaginations to the surface. These choices thus allow me to transcend intimate or situated experiences to open up to more collective questions, linked to territories, cultural legacies, displacement and forms of transmission.
Ouassila : I work primarily with textiles and installation, because these two mediums allow me to remain as close as possible to the body and the conditions of its existence. Textiles, first and foremost, are a material of contact: they touch, envelop and protect, but they can also constrain or leave their mark. They already carry within them a memory of movement, of labour, of wear and tear, and above all a closeness to the intimate and the everyday. What interests me is not textiles as a decorative surface, but as a space for traces. They absorb silent stories: those of care, repetition and fatigue, but also of erasure and repair. They allow us to speak of the body without representing it directly, revealing what it experiences rather than what it shows. The installation, for its part, allows me to arrange these materials within a space and to engage them with a physical experience of sight and movement. I conceive of the works as environments rather than as isolated objects. The viewer is not simply facing something; they are within it, immersed in relationships of proximity, distance and tension. What I seek to construct with these two forms is a language that does not separate the body from its context. The textile retains the traces of absent or invisible bodies, and the installation organises these traces within a space that renders them perceptible, yet not static. It is not a matter of illustrating stories, but of revealing what the materials already contain in terms of memory, violence and fragility.
The exhibition suggests something that continues beyond itself. What do you hope stays with the viewer after leaving the space?
Dalila : I don’t expect them to remember anything. I wouldn’t presume to intrude on their experience of the exhibition. But I am interested in their experiences.
M’barka : I hope that certain feelings will linger: a sense of attentiveness, an openness to multiple narratives. Leaving behind subtle traces – images or gestures that continue to resonate and evolve after the visit – always feels like a source of hope to me, and if this exhibition achieves that, then mission accomplished!!
Ouassila : Above all, I hope that the viewer takes away not an explanation, but a physical sensation of the work. Something that lingers in the body: a tension, a slight unease, or, conversely, a keener awareness of what bodies convey without words. If the exhibition resonates, it is because of this ability to look differently at what is often taken for granted: traces, fatigue, invisible power dynamics. Not as a discourse, but as a perception that continues after leaving the space.
This exhibition was on view at Institut des Cultures d’Islam in Paris until 26 July 2026.
