Gabriel Fontana is a French social designer and visual artist working between Paris and Rotterdam. Trained at the École supérieure d’art et de design de Saint-Étienne and Design Academy Eindhoven, he uses sport as a laboratory for examining identity, group membership and power. His projects combine objects, spaces, rules, workshops and choreographed participation. Instead of treating athletic games as fixed competitions, Fontana redesigns teams, equipment and playing fields so that participants encounter changing alliances and question how inclusion and exclusion are produced.
Projects such as Multiform replace the usual two-team structure with shifting groups, while Sidelined transformed the Dutch Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale into an alternative sports bar with inclusive furniture and reworked games. His practice has moved between schools, museums, community groups and major sporting contexts; Multiform was presented during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and entered MoMA’s architecture and design collection in 2025. Fontana also teaches social design at Design Academy Eindhoven.
From 27 November 2026 to 26 September 2027, Les Abattoirs in Toulouse presents Faire Alliance, his first institutional solo exhibition in France. The project brings together four team games developed since 2019, including Race/Care, created for the museum and the neighbouring cultural venue AVRIL. Through play, Fontana turns questions of care, listening, gender norms and collective responsibility into situations that audiences can experience directly.