Art as a defined set of practices participates to the agonistic dimension of the public sphere, challenges dominant norms and becomes part of controversies. We privilege in our approach the materiality of the public space, artistic expressions, styles as a way of making society, and a mode of translating and transforming the cultural conflicts. In multicultural contexts the norms of public space are unsettled by the appearance of new actors, visibility of differences that change power relations. Public practices such as codes of civility, clothing and language challenge the cultural norms, common sense and established conventions of the national public space and calls for a new “partage du sensible” (Jacques Rancière)