Factory International

Paul Pfeiffer and Edgar Davids: Hunger Game

Paul Pfeiffer sat down at a wooden table next to a large artwork
Edgar Davids stood outside wearing sunglasses
Art / Football 

About the artwork

Hunger Game is a sound installation by American artist Paul Pfeiffer and former Dutch footballer and photographic artist Edgar Davids. The tunnel marks the entry point into the exhibition – a passage where sound, vibration and light transport you into the world between the locker room and the pitch. 

The sound is drawn from a mix of recordings from the player’s point of view – from the roar of the fans to different football songs and chants. The installation takes inspiration from iconic stadiums like San Siro (Milan) as well as the sound of cinematic battle scenes like the Lord of the Rings to explore the anticipation and adrenaline-rush of stepping onto the pitch, as well as the mental and emotional journey of individual football players. As part of the process different player testimonials were gathered from Denzel Dumfries, Wesley Sneijder and Claude Makelele.

Pfeiffer’s practice explores systems of spectacle, celebrity and society.  He works with images to reveal themes like adoration, objectification and myth-making embedded in mass media. In collaboration with Davids, this work explores the world of the tunnel and the perspective of the player, while centering the crowd as a protagonist in its own right. It puts the viewer into a space where identity, nationhood, freedom and creativity are performed and reimagined.

About the pairings

Edgar Davids

Edgar Davids is an iconic Dutch footballer, celebrated for his fierce competitiveness, creative flair, distinctive style — and his legendary goggles. After rising to fame with Ajax, he went on to star for AC Milan, Juventus, Barcelona, Inter Milan, and Tottenham Hotspur, winning numerous domestic and international titles along the way. Beyond his achievements on the pitch, Davids has made a profound impact off it. Through his foundation work, he has harnessed his influence, and the power of street soccer, to foster community cohesion, bring youth back to school, and create pathways to employment. He is the founder of Monta, the world’s first dedicated street soccer brand, and the founder of Parc des Rêves, a global initiative building playgrounds in underserved neighbourhoods to inspire and empower the next generation through play. 

Paul Pfeiffer

Paul Pfeiffer is an artist living and working in New York City, who has been making work in video, photography, installation, and sculpture since the late 1990s. Known for his innovative manipulation of digital media, Pfeiffer recasts the visual language of mass media spectacle to examine how images shape our awareness of ourselves and the world. Sampling footage from YouTube and other sources, he uses these to plumb the depths of contemporary culture, assessing its racial, religious, and technological dimensions. At the same time, Pfeiffer's objects and images function diachronically, establishing profound genealogies that connect contemporary culture and its many particularities to the long, seemingly remote histories of art, media, religion, and human consciousness. He has presented work in major international exhibitions, such as the Performa Biennial and the Honolulu Biennial in 2019 and the Toronto Biennial and Seoul Mediacity Biennale in 2022. His first large-scale retrospective toured the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2023-24); Guggenheim Bilbao (2024); and The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (on view now through August 31, 2025.

Football City, Art United.

Multiple floating soccer balls inside a green room with white goalpost markings on the walls. The perspective and reflections create an illusion of depth, making it appear as if the balls are suspended in mid-air.
Football meets art in this major new exhibition of brand-new works made in collaboration between legendary footballers and contemporary artists.
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