2021

öffentlich zugänglich

Bezirkssportanlage Lerchenau, Ebereschenstraße 15, 80935 München

Siebdrucke auf Stoff, 180 x 90 cm, courtesy der Künstler, Galerie Françoise Heitsch, München und BQ, Berlin

Architecture: LIAG architecten en bouwadviseurs, Den Haag

Landscape architecture: Lex-Kerfers, Bockhorn

Photos: Franzi Müller Schmidt & Peter Schinzler

Text: Bernhart Schwenk

For a long time in the sports world, attention was focused almost exclusively on the male (and white) body. Women, on the other hand—such as football players—were of far less interest. And women athletes who did not fit the norm due to their skin color, a disability, their sexual orientation, or their gender identity were frequently not mentioned at all. Even though some things have changed here since then, sports themselves are far from exhausting the ways to make it possible to see the team spirit of a diverse, equal collective.

Philipp Gufler’s textile works also tell of diversity’s same potential. His quilts—delicate, multi-layered bands of fabric—recall individuals and groups who were subjected to exclusion and later forgotten because they were “queer,” and supposedly “different.” One of the quilts is dedicated to Justin Fashanu, who, in the 1990s, was the first (and until 2021, the only) professional football player to come out as gay during his career and, in addition, to actively oppose racism. Instead of respecting Fashanu, however, hate-filled fans, the press, and his own family attacked him or abandoned him, until he ultimately committed suicide in 1998. His fate is mirrored in the images and texts the artist uses to create his silkscreen-printed quilts.

Besides the athlete Fashanu, Gufler also pays tribute to people from different sectors of society: the dancer Alexander Sakharoff, the lawyer and judge Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, and the gay activist Guido Vael, but he also commemorates the Hof-Atelier Elvira in Munich and the Women’s Resistance Camp in Hunsrück. Gufler’s six quilts emphasize the fact that respect and unlimited solidarity are the most important aspect of any community, even in sports.

In cooperation with the Forum Queeres Archiv München e.V. LesBiSchwul¬TransInter* in Geschichte und Kultur. More information on the people portrayed in the quilts, please click here.