Timed to coincide with the knockout stages of the FIFA World Cup, Offside? explores the increasingly complex relationship between cultural identity and national allegiance through a new body of work by London-based artist Jil Mandeng.

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Opening on 2 July and running until 19 July, the day of the World Cup Final, the exhibition examines how football’s visual language of flags, shirts and national representation intersects with the realities of contemporary identity, where heritage, culture and belonging rarely fit neatly within a single border.

Born in Santiago, Chile, to a Cameroonian-Polish father and a German mother, Mandeng’s practice is informed by her own experience of navigating multiple cultural identities. A graduate of Central Saint Martins and the Slade School of Fine Art, she has developed a body of work that investigates migration, diaspora and the complex ways in which identity is constructed and understood.

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While international football is built around singular allegiance -one nation, one team- Mandeng questions whether that model still reflects contemporary life. Many people today have mixed backgrounds, live between cultures, or feel connected to more than one place. Support can be inherited, chosen or shared across borders, creating identities that are increasingly difficult to define through a single flag.

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Throughout the exhibition, football shirts and masks appear together in unexpected combinations. The football shirt becomes a symbol of national allegiance; the mask a symbol of cultural heritage and ancestral identity. Their deliberate misalignment challenges assumptions about where loyalty should lie and whether identity must ever be singular.

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The exhibition’s title poses a simple but loaded question. In football, being offside means being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But in a world shaped by migration, mixed heritage and cultural exchange, who decides where someone belongs?