Vaginal Davis

Vaginal Davis (born in Los Angeles, California) is an American performing artist, painter, independent curator, composer, filmmaker and writer.

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.

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.

She currently resides in Berlin, Germany.

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 she was born in Wannsee and the "black sheep" of the von Hohenzollern dynasty.

Davis' mother was a revolutionary feminist and community activist in the South Central area, and planted food gardens in vacant lots to help feed the homeless, impoverished, and marginalized peoples of the area.

As a young child in the Los Angeles public education system, Davis was accepted into a program for gifted students, where she was first exposed to and developed a love of theater and opera.

At age 7, Davis saw Mozart's The Magic Flute on a school trip to the opera, and credits this experience as a catalyst for her development as a drag queen.

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."

Vaginal Davis is one of the founders of the homo-core punk movement.

She chooses to exploit herself to engage in rude provocations and "gender-fucking."

As a self-labeled "sexual repulsive", she is an icon of the disruptive performance aesthetic known as terrorist drag.

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."

Bruce LaBruce described the zine as "an underground rag that featured SoCal punk scene gossip, photos of hot Huntington Beach surfers and wistful musings by Miss Davis themself."

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.

Davis was well known for her band ¡Cholita!

The Female Menudo, where she assumed the persona of a 13 1⁄2-year-old Latina named Graciela.

Band mates included longtime collaborator Alice Bag as Sad Girl and Fertile LaToyah Jackson as Guadalupe, ages 16 and 12 1⁄2 respectively.

In 1989, Davis formed the speed metal thrash band Pedro, Muriel, and Esther (PME) with Glen Meadmore.

In PME, Davis performs as Clarence, "a white-supremacist militia-man from Idaho complete with ZZ Top beard."

Davis had previously sung backup vocals for Meadmore, with RuPaul.

PME disbanded after releasing a four-song EP on Amoeba records.

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.

Black Fag's album Passover Satyr was released by Dischord Records that same year and was produced by Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon.

they also hosted and DJed a Sunday afternoon music event called "Sucker" (1994–2000).

The band's 1995 album 11 Harrow House was produced by Hansen's son Beck.

In 1995, Pedro, Muriel, and Esther reunited for a performance at the Queercore '95 festival in Chicago.

The band later released their first full-length album The White to Be Angry, produced by Steve Albini in 1998 on Spectra Sonic Records.

Davis and artist Ron Athey curated and hosted GIMP (2000–2001), a monthly night of performance art.

In Los Angeles, Davis has hosted and DJ'd a range of performance and music events, one of the most prominent being "Bricktops" (2002–2005), a weekly salon/speak-easy inspired by vaudevillian Ada "Bricktop" Smith.

In 2006, Vaginal Davis moved from Los Angeles to Berlin, Germany.

In 2009, Pedro, Muriel and Esther reunited in a 20th-anniversary show presented in New York City by Participant Inc. as part of Performa 09.

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 this year's Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre in London with Kembra Pfahler and the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black.