Del LaGrace Volcano to stage UK shows as queer archive expands
After decades of commercial shortfall and cultural marginalisation, US photographer Del LaGrace Volcano is bringing their influential archive to major UK exhibitions this summer, testing whether European institutions will finally assign market value to radical 1990s queer photography.
Del LaGrace Volcano, the US photographer whose work documenting lesbian subcultures was once briefly banned by the US customs service, will stage major exhibitions this summer at Auto Italia in London and the Edinburgh art festival.
The shows represent a long-delayed institutional embrace of work that Volcano, 68, feels has never received adequate financial validation. "I looked at myself through a very heteronormative capitalist lens and I felt like a failure," Volcano says of reaching the age of 65 without the retirement security of their peers.
Volcano has spent the last two decades living in Örebro, Sweden, a sharp contrast to their previous life documenting London's squats and S&M fetish parties. Their series Love Bites and Queer Dyke Cruising were highly influential in the 1990s, yet the artist has frequently clashed with the commercial expectations of the art world. They notably rejected a request from lauded feminist Judith Butler to take a portrait for free, highlighting the historical friction between radical queer artists and institutions expecting unpaid labour.
Now, Volcano is focused on building what they call their Queer Archive of Resistance. Their ultimate goal is to secure a compound in Sweden where researchers and the public can study their back catalogue. "I will have old and young, queer and non-queer alike coming to visit me in Sweden," Volcano says. "I will be telling my stories and showing my pictures and cooking for people, having interesting conversations."
As European galleries increasingly reassess the legacy of 1990s queer art, Volcano’s upcoming UK shows will test whether the market is ready to assign tangible value to a body of work the artist insists is rooted in technical brilliance. Prints like their 1995 Self Portrait with Blue Beard and a noted portrait of novelist Leslie Feinberg—work Volcano has successfully sold to figures like The Matrix co-creator Lilly Wachowski—sit at the centre of this institutional reassessment.
