MAM Rio inaugurates the Petrobras Space, located in the foyer of the Exhibition Block and dedicated to presenting newly commissioned works by emerging artists.
The inaugural exhibition is THE CUP IS OURS!, a solo show by Froiid, an artist born in Belo Horizonte whose practice proposes a speculative field in which the wheel, the game, and the margins are articulated as productive forces within Brazilian culture.
Created specifically for the Petrobras Space, the installation brings together one thousand plaster replicas of the Jules Rimet Trophy arranged on a grandstand, in a configuration that evokes both a sports arena and the formation of a ritualistic crowd.
The work draws on the historical trajectory of the trophy, created by sculptor Abel Lafleur in 1930 and temporarily awarded to the winning teams of the FIFA World Cup. The object permanently arrived in Brazil following the country's third World Cup victory in 1970, and was stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) in Rio de Janeiro in 1983, never to be recovered.
Prior to that, the trophy had functioned as a propaganda device for the military dictatorship, which anchored its image of economic and social progress in the success of the national football team. Beginning with its disappearance, the artist proposes a reflection on football, political propaganda, and mass culture.
Since 2014, Froiid has developed an ongoing investigation into the game and Brazilian culture in their marginal contexts and forms of sociability, understanding them as spaces for reinvention and the collective construction of subjectivities.
The exhibition opens concurrently with the FIFA World Cup.
Made possible through Petrobras's official sponsorship, the Petrobras Space now becomes part of MAM Rio's permanent program, presenting exhibitions conceived in direct dialogue with the museum's spaces, its architecture, and the flow of visitors.
