“I have always been consistent in my insanity”: Vaginal Davis is a countercultural treasure

If video killed the radio star in 1981, it also inspired a new wave of artists to seize the means of production for themselves. The DIY ethos of punk shattered siloed minds of the establishment, ushering in the multidisciplinary artist long before it was in vogue. For self-described ​‘Blacktress’ and bon vivant Vaginal Davis, it has always been a matter of being true to herself. 

It’s rare to call an exhibition and catalogue a ​‘kiki’, but not everyone can be Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product. Now on view at MoMA PS1, the presentation is a garden of delights from the godmother of queercore, tracing her trailblazing work as performer, visual artist, author, filmmaker, musician, educator, and countercultural icon over the past five decades. 

At 56, Davis is a living treasure and LGBTQ+ community elder who paved her own path with glamour, charm, and savoir faire. ​“Vaginal Davis is known to state her medium as ​‘the indefinite nature of [her] own whimsy,’ and this is evident across Magnificent Product. The works seduce viewers with humour, intrigue, and her clever material misuse, rather than didactically address them,” says Sheldon Gooch, who co-curated the MoMA PS1 exhibition with Jody Graf. 

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Born Gadance Genna Gadee, she renamed herself in honour of Angela Davis in the late ​’70s, having been inspired by her radical anti-racist and anti-capitalist activism. Hailing from Los Angeles, she was born intersex. Her mother, Mary Magdalene, a French Creole mother of five who became a femme lesbian separatist, refused to let doctors operate, giving Davis the freedom to be both. She invented her first persona, ​“Carolyn Langendorf, child actress” at the age of seven. ​“For a time, my family believed that Carolyn was a real person since I received letters regularly from her and I had pen pals from all over the world as I kept correspondence with other children in faraway lands. I saw myself early on as an internationalist,” Davis wrote in the catalogue. 

“I have always been consistent in my insanity,” she continued. ​“Why did I feel a need to keep up this ruse from the age of seven until I was about 13?” Davis realises her predilection for personas was a trauma response to a doctor’s inappropriate examination of her genitals as a child. Her mother went on the attack against the perpetrator, while Davis channelled the chaos into stories she could construct and control as Chrome Chastain, Steele Carrera, Loreal DeHaven, Elmer Occasion, Kayle Hilliard, and Gleeson Brevard, to name just a few. 

But Davis’s creativity could not be contained. It leaped on the stage, unfurling with glorious aplomb in a series of art bands including Black Fag, Cholita! The Female Menudo, the Afro Sisters, and Pedro Muriel and Ester (PME). A master of working with what you’ve got, Davis created the world famous Fertile LaToyah Jackson Magazine on a Xerox machine at her day job, ran HAG Gallery out of her Hollywood apartment, and made no-budget films like The White to Be Angry (1999), all of which have redefined the medium. 

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Queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz famously coined the term ​“terrorist drag” to describe Davis’s work, explaining, ​“Terrorist, insofar as she is performing the nation’s internal terrors around race, gender, and sexuality.” But rather than be dogmatic or didactic, Davis used whimsy and wit, reminding us that play, pleasure, and fun are essential tools of liberation. 

Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product is on view through March 2, 2026 at MoMA PS1. The catalogue is published by Walther König.

Miss Rosen is a freelance arts and photography writer, follow her on X.

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