31 May 2021
“This is a picture of me in my room here at Delfina Foundation. I brought this poster with me and put it up when I arrived at the beginning on May. Lana Kaiser is a German singer and entertainer (1985–2018) who came to fame as a participant in the first season of the Idol television franchise in Germany. Just before coming to London I finished a work about her; a personal portrait in the form of a video installation and artist book. It will premiere at a group exhibition at HDK Munich in mid-June.”
“Since 2013 I have been an active member of the self-organised Forum Queeres Archiv München. Whenever I travel, I always take a copies of my artist books with me. The book with the purple cover here is Quilt #01-#30 and presents a series of my quilt works – silkscreen printed fabrics (2013–ongoing). This series references artists, writers, LGBTIQ+ magazines and lost queer spaces, which I often discover through my archival research, and which are often omitted from mainstream history books. During my residency at Delfina Foundation I am planning to visit a number of UK-based grassroots archives.”
“A recurring starting point in my practice is literature. For 15 years I have hand written excerpts from books alongside my own thoughts on index cards to remember them. I now have a stack of a couple of thousands of cards. I have brought some them with me to London and I continue to add to them.”
“During my residency at Delfina Foundation, I want to look closely at the life of British footballer Justin Fashanu (1961–1998). He was the first black footballer to command a £1 million transfer fee, with his move from Norwich City to Nottingham Forest in 1981. Fashanu came out publicly in 1990, becoming the first professional footballer to be openly gay.”
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Philipp Gufler is an artist-in-residence during Delfina Foundation’s spring 2021 thematic programme Collecting as Practice. His residency is supported by Mondriaan Fonds.
Photos artist’s own.