At the 1936 Berlin Olympics the Polish sprinter Stanisława Walasiewiczówna stood next to a statue of an athlete, and the scene here is authentic. She wears the eagle on her red shirt, and beside her sits a stone sportsman with one arm raised. Walasiewiczówna was intersex and most likely knew it, so she could never become the model representative of either sex. Karol Radziszewski, founder of the Queer Archives Institute, recovers this erased story and gives it a face. She was given the emblem on her chest. A category for her did not exist.
The painter
Karol Radziszewski (born 1980) is a defining figure of queer art in Poland, founder of the Queer Archives Institute and a Polityka Passport laureate. He reads Polish history through a queer lens, turning monumental figures back into people you can come close to, and his work is held by museums in Poland and abroad.