Jill Mulleady draws on her personal memory of meeting Diego Maradona in Buenos Aires, where she grew up, to create a layered, dreamlike installation that resonates with one of football’s most controversial and mythologized moments – "La Mano de Dios" (the Hand of God). Scored during the 1986 World Cup quarter-final between Argentina and England, Maradona’s infamous goal became a national symbol, loaded with political and emotional meaning in the wake of the Malvinas/Falklands War.

Mulleady’s installation features a holographic illusion of Maradona singing Rodrigo’s iconic homage, "La Mano de Dios," alongside a painting that depicts a portrait of him in her signature dreamlike pictorial style. To create the holographic illusion, Mulleady first emulated the gestures of Diego Maradona. Her performance was then transformed through postproduction to embody the digitally generated body of Maradona. This seamless fusion of movement and technology crafted a captivating tribute, capturing not exactly himself but a memory, a portrait of the legendary player as he exists in the popular unconscious.

Mulleady’s paintings often feature ghostlike figures and spaces, charged with a sense of unease, timelessness, and emotional intensity. She has a recurring interest in doppelgängers. While the term often refers to two people who look alike, its origins are more complex – in paranormal thought, a doppelgänger is a ghostly double of a living person, whose presence signals the return of something from the past to haunt them. In this piece, Maradona is seen not only as a historical figure but as a presence that continues to haunt the present.

Using an early optical illusion method known as the Pepper’s Ghost technique, Maradona’s apparition is framed by painted glass, blurring the line between what is real and tangible and what is an image or memory. By referencing early photographic methods, Mulleady highlights how memories are shaped and how powerful images can be. The installation has a gothic sensibility, celebrating football’s relationship to cultural and social change and the figure of Maradona as a trickster – a symbol of divine mischief and mortal brilliance. It reflects Maradona’s spirit – a player whose genius came from breaking the rules and inventing his own. Mulleady taps into this rebellious creativity to suggest new ways of thinking, turning the piece into a symbol of transformation.