Tag Archives: Vaginal Davis

VAGINAL DAVIS — SASSAFRAS, CYPRESS, AND INDIGO

Vaginal Davis brings her lecture performance SASSAFRAS, CYPRESS, AND INDIGO to Portland’s Time-Based Art Festival this week.

Los Angeles-born Davis—a “complex mixture of queercore punk antics and MGM studio glamour”—has been living “in stylish exile” in Berlin for over ten years.

 

VAGINAL DAVIS—SASSAFRAS, CYPRESS, AND INDIGO: BLACK SCREEN IMAGES AND THE (E)MOTIVE NOTION OF FREAKINESS

Wednesday, September 12, at 6:30 pm.

Portland Institute for Contemporary Art

15 N.E. Hancock Street, Portland.

Photographs by Hector (above) and Nebojša-Tabačk.

AXIS MUNDO

AXIS MUNDO—QUEER NETWORKS IN CHICANO L.A. is a PST: LA/LA exhibition exploring the links between queer Chicano artists and their collaborators from the late 1960s to the early 1990s.

Paintings, drawings, videos, artists’ magazines, mail art, flyers, and other ephemera by Skot Armstrong, Vaginal Davis, Mundo Meza, Tomata du Plenty, Teddy Sandoval (Butch Gardens School of Art), Joey Terrill, Jack Vargas (Le Club for Boys), and more are on view at MOCA Pacific Design Center and the ONE Archives Gallery through the end of the year.

AXIS MUNDO is organized by David Evans Frantz and C. Ondine Chavoya, in collaboration with MOCA, Los Angeles.

AXIS MUNDO—QUEER NETWORKS IN CHICANO L.A., through December 31.

MOCA PACIFIC DESIGN CENTER, 8687 Melrose Avenue, West Hollywood.

ONE ARCHIVES GALLERY, 9007 Melrose Avenue, West Hollywood.

moca.org/exhibition/axis-mundo-queer-networks-in-chicano-la

one.usc.edu/axis-mundo/

For more on the ONE Archives Foundation, see:

onearchives.org/

Patssi Valdez, Portrait of Sylvia Delgado, circa early 1980s. Hand-painted photograph with ink and pastel, 20 x 36 in. (50.8 x 91.4 cm). Courtesy of Patssi Valdez. Photograph by Ian Byers-Gamber.

Harry Gamboa Jr., Roberto Gil de Montes, 1978. Gil de Montes shown with his work Tongue Tied in the No Movie exhibition at LACE, May 2–31, 1978. Chromogenic print, 14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm). © 1978, Harry Gamboa Jr.

Gerardo Velázquez, The Neglected Martyr, 1990. Acrylic on canvas, 80 x 66¼ in. (203.2 x 168.3 cm). Gift of the Nervous Gender Archive to the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries. Photograph by Fredrik Nilsen.

Patssi-Valdez_2_Axis-Mundo_ONE-Archives

Harrry-Gamboa-Jr._1_Axis-Mundo_ONE-Archives

Gerardo-Velázquez_1_Axis-Mundo_ONE-Archives

VAGINAL DAVIS PLAYS L.A.

In theory, the Saturday night Nico tribute WARHOL ICON took place all over the Broad Museum and its courtyard, and circulation was encouraged. But when the museum doors opened at 8:30, performance artists Sheree Rose and Ron Athey, filmmaker Eliane Lima, and 200-plus revelers made a beeline for Oculus Hall and stayed put for the next two hours, worshiping at the altar of Vaginal Davis. (Three hours, if you count the stirring after-set by Kembra Pfahler, a bewigged pile-up out of Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill.)

PhilippeGarrel’s La Cicatrice intérieure/The Inner Scar is a film about circles: fire circles, camera circles, drug circles, circles of anguish, circular time. Starring Garrel’s then-partner Nico (shrouded) and PierreClémenti (nude throughout), the film served as a mesmerizing entr’acte to Parts 1 and 2 of the headliner’s brilliant performance. Some highlights from Davis’ monologue:

“Beware the cautionary tale of taking positions of power you initially fought against.”

“ ‘Pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ is Danger Capitalism for ‘Let them eat cake.’ ”

“In Berlin there are backrooms in the organic supermarkets.”

“Good boys are naked boys.”

“You shouldn’t speculate about the future if you can’t speculate about the past.”

“Freud and Lacan had it all wrong. Dildo Theory is different from the Theory of the Phallus. The penis is, and always was, just one of many substitutes for the dildo. And not, I might add, a particularly reliable or attractive one.”

Upcoming Summer Happenings at the Broad include Strange Forest (July 19), Oracle (August 26), and Basquiat (September 23).

thebroad.org/programs

Also see: blog.vaginaldavis.com/

Vaginal Davis at Warhol Icon, Oculus Hall, The Broad, June 24, 2017.

Photographs by Priscilla Mars, courtesy of The Broad.

Davis 1

Davis 2

NICO AT THE BROAD

Christa Päffgen grew up to the sounds of Allied planes dropping bombs on her native Cologne. She was given the name Nico by photographer Herbert Tobias when she was 16 years old and modeling in Berlin.
She worked with Fellini (La Dolce vita), sang the title song for the film Strip-tease (1963), performed at the Blue Angel in Manhattan, met Brian Jones and Dylan, and became the “chanteuse” (Andy Warhol’s term) for The Velvet Underground.
The spirit of Nico will echo throughout the Broad Museum this weekend at WARHOL ICON, the first of this year’s “Summer Happenings.” The event will include musical performances by Jenny HvalKembra PfahlerRose McDowallTiny Vipers and Geneva Jacuzzi, and performance artist Vaginal Davis will interact with a rare screening of La Cicatrice intérieure/The Inner Scar (directed by Philippe Garrel, and starring Nico and Pierre Clementi.)

WARHOL ICON, Saturday, June 24, at 8:30 pm.

THE BROAD, 221 South Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles.

Nico, The Velvet Underground, Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable.

Nico, The Velvet Underground, Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable.