Queer@King’s is honoured to host legendary queer artist, activist and photographer Del LaGrace Volcano for an intimate journey through their archive. Most of the work to be shown—uncensored and unapologetic—has never or rarely been seen by human eyes beyond the decisive moment.

Del LaGrace Volcano (born California 1957) is one of instigators of LGBTQI+ visual culture with a working practice that not only documents a ‘queer time and place’ but also acts as an iconic testament of resistance, capturing the love, lust, and burning desire to defy the forces that seek to destroy and diminish queer people. They have been making work about the queer cultural moments they have lived, created and photographed for the past fifty years. Their art has been shown in solo and group exhibitions around the world, most recently in Sweden, Germany, Finland, USA and Macedonia, and at the UK’s Hayward Gallery and Tate Britain. They are also featured in The Smithsonian Institute’s Great American Artists Oral History Project (2024).

Volcano has produced six photographic monographs: Love Bites (1991), The Drag King Book with Jack Halberstam (1999), Sublime Mutations (2000), Sex Works with Beatriz Preciado (2005), Femmes of Power: Exploding Queer Femininities with Ulrika Dahl (2008) and most recently QUEER DYKE CRUISING (Climax Books, 2024).

About the speakers

Del LaGrace Volcano

Del LaGrace Volcano is an American artist, performer, and activist from California. A formally trained photographer, Volcano's work includes installation, performance and film and interrogates the performance of gender on several levels, especially the performance of masculinity and femininity.

Zeena Feldman

Zeena Feldman is Director of Queer@King’s Research Centre and Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in Digital Culture in the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London. Her research examines how digital technologies impact understandings and performances of traditionally analogue concepts – for instance, belonging, identity and wellbeing. She has published widely, including anthologies with Routledge and IB Tauris/Bloomsbury and in Information, Communication & Society; European Journal of Cultural Studies; Feminist Media Studies; Sexualities; Celebrity Studies; TripleC; The Independent, OpenDemocracy, and The Conversation. Zeena currently runs the Quitting Social Media project, which explores digital detox and digital overload.