Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product

Vaginal Davis is an icon. Her oeuvre, spanning over five decades, defies categorization: a published author, award-winning blacktress, visual artist, drag terrorist, celebrated film and documentary maker, cult figure, international superstar, spokesmodel, gossip columnist, influential socialite, performance artist, educator, fictional (auto)biographer, and counterculture trailblazer.

“She was one of the founders of the queer underground punk scene in the 1980s and 1990s in her hometown of Los Angeles, before moving to Berlin in 2005 to play a leading role in the German capital’s vibrant cultural life”, says Hendrik Folkerts, curator for international contemporary art and exhibition curator, Moderna Museet.

In the exhibition Magnificent Product at Moderna Museet, Vaginal Davis’s work manifests through three major installations that stage the artist’s expansive history in new ways.

“Everything that is culturally fascinating and interesting in the world of entertainment originates in the black queer twilight world, then is adapted by the black straight population and finally incorporated into the dominant or popular culture”, says Vaginal Davis.

In the first gallery, in the so-called “Carla DuPlantier Cinerama Dome”, four of Ms. Davis’s early films and recordings of iconic punk concerts and nightclub events from the 1990s are presented alongside a selection of materials from her vast archive. The second installation, entitled “HAG – small, contemporary, haggard”, is a manifestation of her former apartment gallery in Los Angeles, now showing some of Ms. Davis’s own paintings and sculptures. “The Wicked Pavilion”, housed in the third major gallery, takes the visitor further into Vaginal Davis’s universe, as she draws out the core elements of her practice through a so-called “fantasy library” and an installation of a “tween bedroom”.

“The exhibition is part of Moderna Museet’s long history of showing art that pushes boundaries. Since the museum’s beginnings, the most interesting things on the American art scene have also been introduced to the museum’s many visitors”, says Gitte Ørskou, chief curator at Moderna Museet.

Other venues

Vaginal Davis’s genre-defying and multifaceted practice cannot be contained within the four walls and roof of Moderna Museet. Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product also takes place at five other venues in Stockholm:

• Nationalmuseum: In the exhibition Naked on my Ozgoad: Fausthaus – Anal Deep Throat (May 17 – October 20) Vaginal Davis’s life-long fascination with Frank L. Baum’s books of Oz is highlighted in a new work housed in the Nationalmuseum’s The Old Library, alongside a focused presentation of her paintings.

• Index – Swedish Foundation for Contemporary Art: The installation Vaginal Davis’s Hofpfisterei (May 17 – September 1) showcases Ms. Davis’s writing practice, from her years as teen correspondent in Los Angeles and her groundbreaking zines, to her mature years as a friction-writer.

• Accelerator | Stockholm University: In the exhibition Choose Mutation (May 17 -September 15), Vaginal Davis’s work with (and as part of) the Berlin-based CHEAP performance collective takes centre stage.

• MDT (Moderna Dansteatern): For one time only, on September 4, Vaginal Davis will introduce the films All That Jazz by Jon Fosse (1979) and HAIR by Miloš Forman (1979), as only she can.

• Tensta Konsthall: Near the end of this “magnificent product,” you are invited to Vaginal Davis’s “Universität for the Damaged and Gifted”, a weekend-long festival with ‘lecturinas’ performances, and screenings on September 6-7.