Olmec Cup: The First Ball Game

About

Space – Facing Time by local artist Jesús Mora is part of the international project, the Olmec Cup, celebrating art, culture and sport. Timed with the world’s largest global soccer championship, the Olmec Cup connects ancient history with contemporary sport, bringing communities across North America together through shared creativity and cultural heritage.

The Olmec Cup is a continent-wide public art exhibition spanning major cities in Canada, the United States and Mexico. It features larger-than-life, hand-painted sculptures inspired by the iconic Olmec heads, honouring the Olmec civilization, which created the first known ball game over 3,000 years ago. The game was both ceremonial and communal, uniting participants in celebration and spiritual reflection.

Mora’s Olmec Head draws on this monumental history, exploring migration and connections across Mexico, the United States and Canada. It also reflects themes of duality, Turtle Island and ancestral knowledge, alongside the cultural references of the ancient ball game and modern soccer. Together, these elements highlight the lasting influence of Indigenous cultures on identity, movement and community today.

Learn more about the Olmec Cup

About Jesús Mora

Jesús Mora is an interdisciplinary artist who has studied and worked in Mexico, Canada,and Italy, participating in numerous international exhibitions and cultural projects. A recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011, Mora has exhibited internationally and contributed to numerous community-based cultural projects in Canada. His practice is deeply informed by nature and ancestral Indigenous iconography, reflecting themes of cosmology, identity and cultural continuity.

Jesús Mora is also a member of Tocani, a contemporary fusion band formed in 2017, based in Toronto/Tkaronto, Canada/Turtle Island. Tocani seeks to explore ancient, pre-Hispanic traditions and re-interpret them for the present day, interweaving Nahuatl language, mythology, urban legends, popular stories and the sounds of everyday city life to both connect them to their ancestry and to use traditional ways of knowing and doing to gain a fresh perspective on today.