DOHA — Qatar is aiming to put a controversial statue of
Zinedine Zidane’s notorious 2006 World Cup final headbutt on display for this
year’s tournament, authorities said Monday.
اضافة اعلان
The five-meter high bronze showing the French legend
in confrontation with Italian defender Marco Materazzi was put up for less than
four weeks on the Doha seafront in 2013 when protests that it breached Islamic
rules on idolization led to it being taken down.
The statue will now be at the center of an exhibit
at
Doha’s new international sports museum on the impact of high-level sport on
“mental health and dealing with stress”, said Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin
Khalifa Al-Thani, the head of Qatar Museums.
“It was nothing against public art, it was more that
it felt that was not the right location and it’s going be reinstalled,”
Al-Thani told a press conference.
“We’re actually planning to reinstall it at the
3–2–1 museum. Zidane is a great friend of Qatar and he’s a great role model for
the Arab world.
“One of the things we’re trying to teach and empower
people through art is facts about life. So with the Zinedine Zidane sculpture,
we’ll be talking a lot about the stress on athletes under big tournaments and
the importance of dealing with issues of mental health.”
Museum officials said they hoped to have the statue
on display again by the start of the 2022 World Cup on November 21.
The statue
sculpted by Algerian-born French artist Adel Abdessemed offended conservatives
in the Muslim emirate after it was put up in 2013. A social media campaign saw
many people condemn it as a flagrant violation of religious tenets.
Al-Thani said that there was often opposition to
art. “At the start they criticize it but then they accept it.”
Qatar, which has spent hundreds of millions of
dollars on new museums and art over the past two decades, plans a vast campaign
for the World Cup when 1.4 million people are expected to visit.
The landmark Museum of Islamic Arts, which has
undergone a huge refurbishment, is to reopen in October, Al-Thani said.
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