
Author
Jonathan David Katz and Julia HaasImage
Del LaGrace Lazlo & Shanti, London, 2004 Da Vinci Archival Fiber Gloss Stochastic pigment print 33x23"
PAST
DEL LaGRACE VOLCANO: A Mid-Career Retrospective
Sep 19 - Nov 11, 2012
At once photographer and photographic subject, Del LaGrace Volcano’s art consistently refuses “either/or” categories in favor of “both/and.” His/her art asks the kinds of questions that make their answers provisional and even irrelevant, because the truth is in the asking.
Using the body and its signs of identification, Volcano’s work plays with and against constructions of gender, sexuality, and race, and recasts embodiment as a creative exercise of will power rather than a brute fact of nature. Volcano deploys his/her intersex gender as a provocation to the traditionally binary gender norm, recognizing that for many, the question of gender, like that of sexuality or race, is not an either/or equation.
As the artist admits, “My intention is to explode the notion of the truthful body… Although we all know that the relationship between a photograph and the truth is unreliable at best, we still want to believe what our eyes tell us.”
This is the first museum retrospective of Del LaGrace Volcano’s art in the country of his/her birth. It is both an exercise in creative asking, a manifesto against “nature,” and testimony to art’s extraordinary power to create new worlds in which we would want to live.
Related

PAST
SELDOM SEEN: Never or rarely seen works from the permanent collection
Nov 17 - Jan 23, 2010
more
PAST
LESBIANS SEEING LESBIANS: Building Community in Early Feminist Photography
Sep 14 - Dec 22, 2011
more
PAST
Nude In Public: Sascha Schneider: Homoeroticism and the Male Form circa 1900
Sep 20 - Dec 08, 2013
more
PAST
MEDIUM OF DESIRE: An International Anthology of Photography and Video
Dec 18 - Mar 27, 2016
more
PAST
RUBBISH AND DREAMS: The Genderqueer Performance Art of Stephen Varble
Sep 29 - Jan 27, 2019
more
PAST
ROBERT GIARD (1939-2002) Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay & Lesbian Writers
Apr 25 - May 20, 2020
more