As one of her three works in Sharjah Biennial 9 Maider López remade Football Field, a work originally created as part of her Sharjah residency project in 2007. For this work, López marked out a football field with painted lines across the middle of the main public square of the Sharjah Art Area. The everyday use of the square was maintained and existing street lamps and benches were left as they were, interrupting the field of play. The square therefore took on two simultaneous and tangible uses.

As with many of López’s works, Football Field highlights the capacity that people have to transform the meanings of the familiar, everyday spaces around them. López’s practice is often informed and activated by the inhabitants of the space and their experience. As the artist states, “My projects attempt to rework the idea of the city through the practice of the people.” López’s interventions temporarily reconfigure the uses of their surrounding space and, as a consequence, change the meanings of those spaces and the public’s relationship to them: “My challenge is always to make something that can transform the place, giving new possibilities and offering new interpretations of that specific environment.”

Artist’s quotations from Provisions, Book 1, catalogue for Sharjah Biennial 9.