Del LaGrace Volcano
| Del LaGrace Volcano | |
|---|---|
| Born |
26 July 1957 California, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Photographer, activist |
| Website | dellagracevolcano |
Del LaGrace Volcano (born in California in 1957) is "one of instigators of polymorphous perverse queer culture." A formally trained photographer, Del's work includes installation, performance and film and interrogates the performance of gender on several levels, especially the performance of masculinity and femininity.
Del earned an MA in Photographic Studies at University of Derby, UK in 1992 after studying photography at the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco from 1979-81. Prior to Studying at San Francisco, Del attended Allan Hancock College as a student in the Visual Studies program from 1977-79. Born intersex with both male and female characteristics but raised as female from birth, Del lived the first 37 years of their life as a woman, but since then has been living as both male and female.
Volcano's work complicates understandings of both femininity and masculinity by depicting lesbian masculinity. In "The Feminine Principle" Volcano takes queer femininities as a focus. Included in this project is a portrait of Kate Bornstein. In "Lesbian Boyz and Other Inverts," Volcano's celebration of butch dykes, transsexual boys and other gender-queers, masculinity is shown as a tool of subversion.
Volcano's most recent photographs demonstrate how intersexed bodies can offer an entirely new perspective on the body. The 'normal' body in relation to Volcano's photographs becomes queer. Volcano describes the bodies in their latest works as "sites of mutation, loss, and longing." In these newer works, Volcano takes on the loss of their friend, Kathy Acker and the transformation of their lover Simo Maronati's abled body into a disabled one. 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 pervious work it speaks to the construction of different age-selves and the technologies of gender in photography.
Volcano's artist statement of September 2005 reads:
"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."
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