Vaginal Davis

Vaginal Davis (born in Los Angeles, California) is an American performer, painter, independent curator, composer, film-maker and writer. Born intersex and raised in South Central, Los Angeles, Davis gained notoriety in New York during the 1980s, where she inspired the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn's prevalent drag scene as a genderqueer artist.

Early life Growing up, Davis lived with her mother, originally from Louisiana, and four older sisters. Her mother was Black Creole, her father was of Mexican and Jewish descent, and her grandfather was of German descent, with Davis stating that he was born in Wannsee and was the "black sheep" of the von Hohenzollern dynasty.

Career

Davis' name pays homage to activist Angela Davis, and considers Davis' involvement with the Black Panther Party and activism as a whole to be one of her biggest inspirations, explaining, "They came into the schools, they had guns, and they took over. They were teaching us all these revolutionary songs and chants and what not. At that time, when Angela Davis was the most wanted woman in America, I was just fixated with that image of her. By the late '70s I had decided I sort of wanted to sexualize her name and become her, more or less. So I started in the late '70s calling myself Vaginal Davis. I started to perform– or tried to perform– at these gay clubs in Los Angeles, in Hollywood. The people in these clubs, they would look at me and say, 'Vaginal Davis? Well who are you supposed to be?' And I said, 'Well, Angela Davis– it's a homage to that.' And they'd say, 'Well who's that?' They didn't know who Angela Davis was."

1970–1989: Career beginnings Vaginal Davis' band the Afro Sisters released their first seven-inch EP Indigo, Sassafras & Molasses, produced by Geza X with Amoeba Records in 1978. The Afro Sisters opened for the Smiths on their first American tour, as well as the Happy Mondays.

Vaginal Davis is often associated with the formation of the Queercore zine movement. From 1982 to 1991, she self-published the zine Fertile La Toyah Jackson, focused on the imaginary adventures of a skateboarding, pregnant Jackson, and hailed by The Advocate critic Adam Block as "A veritable John Waters film of a skinny 'zine." Through Davis' job at UCLA's Placement & Career Planning Center, she was allowed free access to a Xerox machine to publish the zine. Davis went on to develop the zine into a series of videos titled Fertile LaToyah Jackson Video Magazine, Volume 1 and 2.

1989–1999: Bands Davis was well known for her

Davis formed the band Black Fag in 1992 with Bibbe Hansen. Through the persona Rayvn Cymone McFarlane, Davis parodied the LA alternative scene, while engaging in performative actions such as spraying the audience with milk from her bra.

2010–present: Performance, visual art, and teaching Davis' performance piece "Speaking from the Diaphragm" ran from May 15 to 27, 2010, at Performance Space 122. The show parodied television talk shows and featured interviews by Carole Pope, Jamie Stewart, Joel Gibb, and Glen Meadmore and was co-hosted by Carmelita Tropicana and Jennifer Miller.

In January 2012 Davis participated in the J. Paul Getty's "Pacific Standard Time Performance Festival, with "My Pussy Is Still in Los Angeles (I Only Live in Berlin)" at Southwestern Law School, Louis XVI-style Tea Room (originally Bullocks Wilshire Department Store). April 2012, Davis debuted live her band Tenderloin as part of the festival "Camp/Anti-Camp: A Queer Guide to Everyday Life" at Hebbel am Ufer. Tenderloin's line-up consisted of Felix Knoke, Jan Klesse, Joel Gibb, and Vaginal Davis performing under the alias "Dagmar Hofpfisterei.". In August 2012 the band was invited by curator Anthony Hegarty to perform at the Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre in London with Kembra Pfahler and the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. After the performances Tenderloin released the music video for "The Golden One" that featured drag queen the Goddess Bunny and was directed by Glen Meadmore.

From November 9 to December 16, 2012, Davis opened her first major solo exhibition of solely visual art (as opposed to performance art), titled "HAG – small, contemporary, haggard" at the Participant Inc. in New York. The name of the show is based on the gallery that Davis hosted in her Los Angeles apartment from 1982–89.

Davis has traveled to various universities and educational institutions to give lectures on her life experiences, including a talk on youth hosteling at New York University's Performance Studies complex in November 2015 with German actress and friend Susanne Sachsse. From December 1 to 5 of the same year, Davis teamed with avant-garde music group Xiu Xiu when they composed the score for her radical re-imagining of Mozart's opera The Magic Flute, performed at the 80WSE Gallery at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, in partnership with Berlin's CHEAP Kollectiv.

In mid-October 2016, Davis was a keynote speaker at the Creative Time Summit in Washington, D.C., a conference on art and social issues which featured workshops and speeches on topics ranging from the Black Lives Matter movement to electoral politics.

In 2024, her work was included in Xican-a.o.x. Body a major group exhibition at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida, which traveled from the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum, California. A scholarly publication was released by Chicago University Press in tandem with the show.

From October 9, 2025 – March 2, 2026, MoMA PS1 exhibited Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product, her first major museum show. The exhibit was also shown at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm (May 18, 2024 – October 13, 2024) and Gropius Bau, Berlin (March 21, 2025 – September 13, 2025). The PS1 exhibit included the installation “The Wicked Pavilion: Tween Bedroom” where a picture of Angela Davis can be seen.

Artistry Davis has been accepted as an artist in the queer community more recently, but "the gay world [only] became more open to what [she] did after [she] established [her]self outside of the gay world." For many years, Davis felt as though she was "too gay for the punk scene and too punk for the gay." for Davis was neither "glamour" like New York performers Candis Cayne and Girlina, nor "clown" (camp) like drag queens Varla Jean Merman and Lady Bunny. According to Davis, "I wasn't really trying to alter myself to look like a real woman. I didn't wear false eyelashes or fake breasts. It wasn't about the real-ness of traditional drag – the perfect flawless makeup. I just put on a little lipstick, a little eyeshadow and a wig and went there." Davis has several drag personas, including Princess Sellica the Sensual Psychic, R&B legend Lestar Vartan and Lieutenant Vaginal Davis of the Sexualese Liberation Front. She was also a muse to German choreographer Pina Bausch, as well as fashion designer Rick Owens and photographer Catherine Opie.

Davis also claims, in a 2015 interview with Bedford and Brooklyns Nicole Disser, that much of her artwork and performances are inspired by her late mother's artistic ability, stating, "I'm so intertwined with my mother. My whole career as an artist, and all of my visual art, is basically co-opting my mother. My mother didn't consider herself an artist, she just made stuff. Looking back to the things that she did, they were installations, assemblages – things in the art world that have proper names to them – she was doing this way back then. If I get any notice for any of my artworks or any of my performances, it's because I just copied my mother."

Personal life Davis has chosen to keep her exact birth year, as well as the name she was given at birth, private.

Discography The Afro Sisters Indigo, Sassafras & Molasses (1978) Maxis on Melrose (1980) So Black I'm Blue (1981) Too Black, Too Strong (1982) Shoulder Pads, Maxi Pads (1983) Magnificent Product (1984) Armed & Extremely Dangerous (1985) Wet Lesbian (1986)

Black Fag Parerga y Paralipomena (1992) Atlas Shrugged (1993) Passover Satyr (1994) 11 Harrow House (1995)

¡Cholita! The Female Menudo ¡No Controles! (1987) Chicas De Hoy (1989) ¡Cholita! (1996)

Pedro, Muriel & Esther PME (1991) The White to Be Angry (1998)

Solo Small Whyte House (Vaginal Davis and Robespierre) (1994)

Other appearances Title Year AlbumRole "Well, Well, Well" (Le Tigre featuring Vaginal Davis) 2004 Feminist Sweepstakes Sounds of Ecstasy "I Could Have Sex" (Technova featuring Vaginal Davis) Electrosexual — "Mama's Not Dead" (Technova featuring Vaginal Davis)— "My Pussy is a Cactus" (Technova featuring Vaginal Davis)— "Mangina" (Technova featuring Vaginal Davis)— "Bitterest Pill" (Technova featuring Vaginal Davis)— "Girls Like Us" (The Julie Ruin featuring Vaginal Davis) 2012 Non-album single — "Faith, Torn Apart" (Xiu Xiu featuring Vaginal Davis) 2017FORGET—

Filmography Film 1994 Designy Living 1994 Three Faces of Women Director- Rick Castro 1995 Super 8½ 1995 Live Nude Girls Pool Man 1996 Hustler White Buster Boote 1998 Hallelujah! Ron Athey: A Story of Deliverance Herself 1999 The White To Be Angry Director; short film 1999 Can I Be Your Bratwurst, Please? Director; short film 2001 The Other Newest One Director; short film 2001 Le Petite Tonkinoise Director; short film 2001 Fra unter Einfluss Director; short film 2005 Beyond Lovely Bruce B. Short film 2006 The Pikme-Up Herself 2008 The Lollipop Generation Beulah Blacktress 2010 The Dream of Norma Norma Short film 2010 The Bad Breast; or, The Strange Case of Theda Strange Short film2010Teddy´s Beastiary. Letters to the ParentsTh.W. Adorno, his auntDir. Bear Boy (short) 2011 The Advocate for Fagdom Herself 2012 Rosas Welt – 70 neue Filme von Rosa von Praunheim Marta Feuchtwanger2012 She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column Herself2012Hippo NarcissusTh.W.AdornoDir. Bear Boy (short)

Television Year Title Role Notes 1993 Tales of the City Endup Emcee 2001 Gideon's Crossing Eddie Episode 9: "Is There a Wise Man in the House?"

Zine-ography Dowager (1972-1975)