UEFA WePlayStrong House on Tour brings women’s football to Paris A place to experience football beyond the pitch
During Paris Fashion Week, women’s football will have a space of its own in the heart of the French capital. From 1 to 4 October, La Galerie Bachaumont will host the first stop of WePlayStrong House on Tour, the UEFA project taking the WePlayStrong concept beyond the city that hosts the UEFA Women’s Champions League final each year.
For four days, football will enter into conversation with art, fashion, photography, film and culture, turning a space in Paris’ second arrondissement into a meeting point for players, fans, artists, creators and local communities. More than just a place dedicated to football, it will be a space designed to explore everything that exists around the game and the people shaping its image and culture.
Six artists offer a different perspective on football
At the heart of the project will be Belonging – Playing At Home, an exhibition curated by French-Algerian creative director and curator Fatima Rouina, who has long worked at the intersection of grassroots women’s football, art and culture in Paris. For the occasion, she has brought together six French women artists, inviting them to explore the relationship between women and football through different creative disciplines.
Calixte Bernard will bring her painting, shaped by comics, cinema and everyday life, while Kloé Camier will use photography to explore identity, memory and belonging through the body and objects. Twin sisters Lili & Eole Wurm will work across video and installation, focusing on the body and female presence within spaces traditionally associated with men.
Also featured will be the analogue photography and collages of Melina Levy, the fashion design and upcycling of Dünya Boukheres and the video work of Emma Lazli-Bert. Six different perspectives that use football as a starting point to explore identity, representation and community.
When the jersey becomes a fashion object
One of the exhibition’s most interesting projects will come from Dünya Boukheres. The Paris-based designer and founder of independent label ISISDÜNYA will create a new piece exclusively for the exhibition, using existing football jerseys as its raw material.
Upcycling becomes a way to reflect on the identity of women’s football and what it means to belong to a community. The jersey, traditionally designed as a uniform and a symbol of belonging to a team, is taken apart and transformed into something new. A process that also challenges the boundary between sportswear and fashion, showing how an object created for the pitch can take on new meanings away from the stadium.
A place to experience football beyond the pitch
WePlayStrong House on Tour will be more than an exhibition. The programme will include creative workshops, community activities and meetings with grassroots organisations working to develop women’s football in Paris. There will also be a Women’s Football Culture Library, bringing together an international selection of magazines, zines, books and independent publications exploring women’s football culture, alongside a presentation and signing of Chiara Calgaro’s Changing Room.
Film will be another point of connection between sport and culture, with a screening of Marinette, the film telling the story of French football icon Marinette Pichon, with lead actress Garance Marillier in attendance. The programme will also include a display of the UEFA Women’s Champions League trophy inside the venue.
Bringing women’s football to Paris during Fashion Week means placing the game within a broader conversation, where the boundaries between football, fashion and culture are increasingly blurred. With WePlayStrong House on Tour, UEFA is creating a space where football is not only played or watched, but also photographed, reinterpreted, worn and told through new perspectives.
