Gabriel Fontana
Artist, designer
August-October 2025
- Visual Arts
- Los Angeles
“The project “Cheers” questions norms of gender, sexuality, and beauty. In Los Angeles, Gabriel Fontana will study the strategies used by the queer community to reinvent cheerleading as an emancipatory practice.”
I am a freelance artist-designer working in the field of social design between France and the Netherlands, where I develop projects that blend sports, popular education, and alternative pedagogies. I view my design practice as interdisciplinary, at the intersection of visual and performing arts, and I am also interested in the social and political dimensions of design.
Considering the body as a learning tool, my area of study and reflection explores how our bodies express, internalize, and reproduce social and gender norms. Through new forms of pedagogy, games, and choreography, my artistic work offers tools for exploration and experimentation aimed at deconstructing these norms and rethinking our social relationships.
In this context, sports have become my research field and primary tool of action. My work involves reclaiming sports spaces and reinventing their practice as a truly queer pedagogy, deeply emancipatory.
Based on this approach, I developed Multiform (2019) in collaboration with the municipality of Rotterdam; an educational program for primary and secondary schools that contributes to a more inclusive physical education. More recently, I launched the series Tournament of the Unknown (2021), a collaborative project that, through the recreation of a sports event, invites diverse audiences to practice and play with new models of society.
Independent artist-designer Gabriel Fontana works in the field of social design. A graduate of the École Supérieure d’Art et de Design de Saint-Étienne and the Design Academy Eindhoven, Gabriel advocates for an interdisciplinary approach to design that straddles the boundaries of visual art and performing arts. He explores how ideologies shape movements and vice versa, positioning design as a social and political practice. Particularly interested in sports, his approach aims to question sports spaces and reinvent their practice as inclusive and queer pedagogy. He developed the educational program Multiform (2019) in collaboration with the municipality of Rotterdam, which contributes to a more inclusive physical education, and he also launched the series Tournament of the Unknown (2021), which invites the public to engage with new societal models. These new sports have been played in numerous schools across Europe and presented in several prestigious institutions. His work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Pierre Keller Award (2023), Dutch Design Awards (2023), Rotterdam New Talent Award (2018), and the Forum Design Paris Award (2018).
The project Cheers is a design research that investigates cheerleading as a cultural phenomenon and national symbol. I see in this project, the opportunity to extend my design methodology – focused on games and choreographies – and dedicate myself to research, combined with other aesthetics, other disciplines, and other cultural settings.
As a social and political form of dance, cheerleading is an American icon of youthful prestige, leadership, and popularity. However the discourses and imagery that is involved shape the body in conjunction with a patriarchal ideal of feminine beauty and objectified sexuality. Spread by media and pop culture, this imagery has an impact that extends far beyond the US and shapes our understanding of body norms, gender and sexuality.
In response to that, I will investigate during my residency how marginalized communities are currently reclaiming and reinventing cheerleading as a practice of emancipation.
Furthermore, I am interested to research how social justice movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter are currently reshaping American sport culture and how this has an impact on a global scale.
During my residency, I will collect personal stories of athletes that span beyond the stereotypical image of a cheerleader, which has been traditionally portrayed as a white, heterosexual, sample-size female athlete. By focusing on LGBTQ+ cheerleaders, the project will demonstrate how both societal and bodily norms are constructed within sports practices, and demonstrate what it can mean to counteract these norms that are otherwise taken for granted.
As a designer interested in social justice, body movement and sociology of sport, the United-States offers a fascinating field of research and design opportunity for me.
Sports are an essential and important aspect of American society. Some of the biggest and most watched sports competitions happen in the US such as the Super Bowl or NBA All- Star game. Moreover College sports competitions play an important role in both the American sporting culture, media and imagery that are spread and influence us around the world.
I decided to ground my research in Los Angeles to explore the global phenomenon of “lifestyle sports” and work with the Cheer LA organization. In this context, I am particularly interested to investigate how sport practices become a symbolic embodiment of a “Californian” way of life, characterized by wellness, limitless wealth and beauty standards. In order to extend my field of research, I will explore various sport contexts going to: (1) urban sports (LA Venice Beach); (2) college club sports (eg. LA Pep Squad Club) and (3) mainstream national championship (eg. Super Bowl). By investigating these three different settings, I will get a better understanding of the social implication of cheerleading as well as how American culture shapes sports and vice versa.
In partnership with
La Ferme du Buisson
Located near Paris, a former farm of the 19th century, the Scène Nationale La Ferme du Buisson is a unique place, dedicated to the arts and culture, their manufacture and dissemination. It has an Art & Essai Cinema, a Contemporary Art Centre of national interest, and several theatres.
Bettencourt Schueller Foundation
Bettencourt Schueller Foundation strives to embody the will of a family, driven by the spirit of enterprise and awareness of its social role, to reveal talents and help them thrive, in three fields that contribute concretely to the common good: life sciences, the arts and solidarity. Both a family foundation and recognized as a public utility since its creation in 1987, the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation intends to give wings to talent to contribute to the success and influence of France.
MAC VAL