Del LaGrace Volcano (born July 26, 1957) is an American artist, performer, and activist from California. A formally trained photographer, Volcano’s work includes installation, performance and film and interrogates the performance of gender on several levels, especially the performance of masculinity and femininity.
Table of Contents
- 1 Life and career
- 1.1 Selected publications
- 1.2 The Drag King Book
- 1.3 Queer Theory (Readers in Cultural Criticism)
- 1.4 Sublime Mutations
- 1.5 Jenny Saville: Territories
- 1.6 Femmes of Power: Exploding Queer Femininities
- 1.7 Queer Tracks: Subversive Strategies in Rock and Pop Music (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series)
- 1.8 InnoGear Essential Oil Diffuser, Upgraded Diffusers for Essential Oils Aromatherapy Diffuser Cool Mist Humidifier with 7 Colors Lights 2 Mist Mode Waterless Auto Off for Home Office Room, Basic White
- 1.9 Capri Blue Candle - 19 Oz - Volcano - White
- 1.10 Intersex and After (Volume 15) (Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies)
- 1.11 Triple Strength Astaxanthin (12mg) with Organic Coconut Oil | Non-GMO, Soy & Gluten Free - 60 Mini Softgels (2 Month Supply)
Life and career
Prior to moving to San Francisco when they were nineteen, Volcano attended Allan Hancock College as a student in the Visual Studies program from 1977-79. Volcano earned an MA in Photographic Studies at University of Derby, UK in 1992 after studying photography at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1979-81. Del LaGrace Volcano continues their quest to be their true selves through their gender and their names.
Volcano’s work depicts lesbian masculinity, which complicates our understanding of femininity and masculinity. Volcano’s “The Feminine Principe” focuses on queer femininities. This project also includes a portrait by Kate Bornstein. In “Lesbian Boyz and Other Inverts,” Volcano’s celebration of butch dykes, transsexual boys and other gender-queers. In the project, masculinity is shown as a tool of subversion.
Volcano’s latest photographs show how intersex bodies can provide a completely new perspective on the human body. The “normal” body in relation to Volcano’s photographs becomes queer, describing the bodies in their latest works as “sites of mutation, loss, and longing.” Volcano’s newer works deal with the death of Kathy Acker, and the transformation Simo Maronati, their disabled lover, into an able-bodied body. Here, Volcano illustrates the queerness of any body marked by illness or trauma. Their self-portrait “INTER*me” photograph series (formally the “Herm Body” series) is a raw rendition of the artist’s body using black and white Polaroid film, in conversation with their previous work it speaks to the construction of different age-selves and the technologies of gender in photography.
Volcano’s September 2005 artist statement reads:
Volcano also explores themes of both sexual and gender fluidity throughout their work. Volcano frequently depicts the instability and gender identity of Volcano’s work. They often use their queerness to challenge the notion of sexual identity being something that is permanent embodied. As shown in Volcano’s photography book, “Love Bites”, Volcano presents various images of women at sexual play, dressed “in costumes ranging from brides to gay leather men”. Volcano, in this way, seems to aim at defying conventional gender norms and feminist principles within their text. Volcano pushes the agenda further and plays with the notion of age dynamics and, most importantly, youth in terms of sexuality.
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Selected Exhibitions
Volcano was honored with a retrospective in his mid-career at the Leslie Lohman Museum, 2012.
Selected publications
Selected published works include:
Love Bites, as Della Grace, published by Gay Men’s Press, London, 1991: “Perhaps the first published photographic monograph of lesbian sexuality in the world made from an insider’s perspective. LOVE BITES was a controversial book that generated censorship and controversy in mainstream media and lesbian/gay media. It was banned in the USA by Customs &, Excise for two consecutive weeks. They removed the most offensive photos from the book in Canada before they sold it. It was sold in England by mainstream bookshops, but not in gay or lesbian bookshops. It is still considered a classic queer book, even though it has been out of print since more than 10 years. “
The Drag King Book was co-authored by Judith Halberstam and published by Serpent’s Tail in 1999. The Drag King Book focuses on the drag kings in London, San Francisco and New York. Volcano, in the book’s forward, describes their first experience with a drag king act, which took place in San Francisco in 1985 when “the On Our Backs/ BurLEZK gang were putting on strip shows for lesbians at The Baybrick Inn.“
Sublime Mutations, published by Konkursbuchverlag, 2000: “Sublime Mutations, a photographic retrospective of Del LaGrace Volcano’s work produced over the course of the last ten years, visually remaps the political and theoretical cutting edge of the queer avant garde.” Jay Prossler’s introduction states that LaGrace Volcano’s work allows us to see the changing shapes of our bodies as well as our communities. Importantly however, we also glimpse the changes promised by our was of seeing, the mutations we read as well as those that are visited upon our bodies. LaGrace Volcano skillfully demonstrates that sublime mutations are always already the transformations that viewers project on the physical world, and especially on the body.
Sex Works 1978-2005, also containing an essay by Beatriz Preciado. Konkursbuchverlag, 2005. Sex Works shows a history of sex in the queer scene.
A contribution to the book Inter: Erfahrungen intergeschlechtlicher Menschen in der Welt der zwei Geschlechter, edited by Elisa Barth, in 2013. Other notable contributors include Mauro Cabral, Sally Gross, and Phoebe Hart.
An article in Queer Theory edited by Annabelle Willox and Iain Morland, published 2004. The book contains fifteen articles about sexuality, gender studies, and other aspects related to queer studies. Stephen Whittle, Cheryl Chase and Larry Kramer are some of the other notable contributors.
A contribution to Intersex and After, an issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies edited by Iain Morland in 2009. Notable contributors included Alice Dreger, Iain Morland, and Vernon Rosario.
Femmes Of Power : Exploding Queer Feminities was co-authored by Ulrika Dahl. Published by Serpent’s Tail in 2008
Volcano’s photography featured in the sex-positive lesbian erotica publication Quim Magazine, published in the UK between 1989 and 2001.
Last update 2021-08-06