The California-born gender-variant photographer, who's been living in Europe since 1982, is gearing up for a metaphorical homecoming of sorts: his/her first U.S. exhibition, which opens Sept. 19 at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City. Curated by Jonathan David Katz and Julia Haas, "Del LaGrace Volcano: A Mid-Career Retrospective" aims to explore "identities, genders and desires" that exist beyond the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) spectrum.
BIOGRAPHY (By Del LaGrace Volcano, September 2005
Del LaGrace Volcano is a gender variant visual artist and cultural producer working with the body and gender/sexual identity notions for both social, political and personal purposes.
As a gender variant visual artist I access 'technologies of gender' in order to amplify rather than erase the hermaphroditic traces of my body. I name myself. A gender abolitionist. A part time gender terrorist. An intentional mutation and intersex by design, (as opposed to diagnosis), in order to distinguish my journey from the thousands of intersex individuals who have had their 'ambiguous' bodies mutilated and disfigured in a misguided attempt at 'normalization'. I believe in crossing the line as many times as it takes to build a bridge we can all walk across.
Del has produced four monographs:
1- SEX WORKS shows the history of sex in the queer scene in thrilling pictures.
2- SUBLIME MUTATIONS Throughout this beautiful and moving collection, LaGrace Volcano returns to the materiality of the body in order to trouble the conventional in a forceful challenge to both biological essentialism and theories of transgression.
3- THE DRAG KING BOOK explores the lives, communities and performances of many of the leading Drag Kings in mid-late 90's New York, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Milan and Paris through photographs, text and interviews.
4- LOVE BITES Perhaps the first published photographic monograph of lesbian sexuality in the world made from an insider's perspective. In the early 90's LOVE BITES generated a great deal of controversy and censorship in both the mainstream and lesbian/gay media.
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