The goddess of queer punk Vaginal Davis burst onto the Los Angeles performance scene in the late 1970s as the front woman for the art-punk band Afro Sisters, then became an integral influence in drag performance and a matriarch for performance artists. Born intersex during a time when doctors performed medical interventions in order to assign gender, Davis’s mother refused. While her birth certificate stated male, her family used she/her pronouns. Honing in on her German, Jewish, Mexican, and French-creole heritage, she would go on to create fictional characters that were “multiracial and maxi-gendered.”
Davis was a member of the subculture group Homocore, which hosted a queer punk night in the mid-90s that influenced the Riot Grrrl movement and featured bands including Sleater-Kinney, Los Crudos, Tribe 8, Bikini Kill, the Butchies, and more. The decade-long monthly queer night expanded to cities like Detriot, Minneapolis, and New York, and finally ended with Le Tigre’s Chicago debut in 2000. Davis was closely tied to the Queercore zine movement, where she published Fertile La Toyah Jackson from 1982 to 1991, which she turned into a video performance project. At Homocore events, Davis would share zines, present lo-fi films, and perform poetry.
Through 4/26, Sun-Tue and Sat 10:30 AM-5 PM, Wed-Fri 10:30 AM-8 PM, the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan, artic.edu, $25, $22 for Illinois residents, $20 for Chicago residents, $14-$19 for seniors and students, members and children 13 and under are free.
