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TThe peaceful Swedish city of Örebro is not where you’d expect to find Del LaGrace Volcano, a US artist known for his disturbing images depicting LGBTQ+ communities, drag queens and sexual desire. Yet this is the place he has called home for the past two decades, having moved in with his old friend, Matilda Wurm, an assistant professor at the city’s university. Now, their days are spent walking around the nearby forest and trips to the outdoor swimming pool with the couple’s two children. It’s a far cry from the life Volcano once had in London, where he lived in squats, went to S&M magic parties and wrote about gay culture.
I think London will always be my city, “Volcano tells me after picking me up from my hotel in the city center of Örebro (deserted). Between Stockholm and Gothenburg, the former commercial center known as the medieval Castle “is not a strange city”, the artist admits. Most of their neighbors do not even know that they are idiots. Volcano, 68, is intersex and calls himself “hermaphrodyke” – but these days “they pass as young adults”, he says. and grimace.
Formerly known as Della Grace, Volcano grew up as a girl, but as soon as she reached puberty it became known that her breasts and menstruation were different. On the doctor’s advice she was given a breast implant that she didn’t want, and banished to live as a woman. It wasn’t until the 1990s that their girlfriend at the time encouraged them to stop pulling out their hair. From then on, they began to embrace their intersex identity, taking a photo Self Portrait with Blue Beard in 1995which would be one of their most famous works.
Most of the press Volcano received was disparaging. They tell me: “I feel like the world wasn’t ready for me. In one interview, published in this paper in 1995, a reporter described the “laughter” of a “bearded woman” standing in front of him, while in the gay section of Time Out in 1997, a column called “Falling from Grace” described in detail how Volcano made the writer “very uncomfortable”.
For the next thirty years, the artist is tired of being criticized and ridiculed – and often interferes with what he wants people to notice: his bold, striking, technically brilliant images. This is not to say that Volcano did not gain some popularity. Their depictions of lesbian culture, Queer Dyke Cruising and Love Bites, were popular, if controversial at the time (Love Bites was briefly banned by US customs for its gay content). But it seems that Volcano is still waiting for their work to be proven – especially financially – they feel it is worth it.
“I had a big problem at 65, because that’s when people retire,” he says. “I looked at myself through a very strange capitalist lens and I felt like a failure.” Meanwhile, her marriage to Wurm ended. They also thought they would die at the age of 67 – the same age as their mother. Volcano is a woo-woo delight, it also shows the importance of, for example, that it shares a birthday with famous people including Helen Mirren and Sandra Bullock, as well as her ex-husband. After years of destruction, it has found a new lease of life, and it’s a big show coming up this summer in two sister venues in the UK: one at Auto Italia in London and the other at the Edinburgh Art Festival.
Volcano wants their people to feel seen and cared for, he explains – admitting it’s a way to improve if they weren’t seen or cared for as children. Their parents separated when they were young, so they spent their childhood between their mother’s hippie family in Santa Maria, California, and their father’s strict Mormon family in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Although they discovered at a young age that their mother and stepfather were gay, their mother did not agree with them when they came out as gay. Volcano describes their mother as a “liar”, who told them that their father had shot her the day she was born – a story their father later denied. Even so, since he died she “misses him a lot”, even though she wanted to run away for most of their childhood. “I ran away from home a lot” and “left home when I was 17,” she says.
Volcano takes us to their house, which is a few kilometers from the city center, and insists that we stop on the “jaunt around the house” route. Although living in Örebro has not been easy for the artist, I can see their pride in its beauty when they show it to me. While Volcano prepares quiches and salads, they let me flick through the books and magazines they’ve been featured in, looking at photos from their archives. One in particular, a portrait of a novelist Leslie Feinberghe catches my eye. Feinberg is in the middle, looking straight into the camera, in a way that could be aggressive but somehow isn’t. “I think it’s the best picture of Leslie that’s ever been made,” says Volcano – and I have a feeling he might be right.
They don’t hide their annoyance at the way critics focus on the art of their work, and they always ask me about what I know about the artists and celebrities of the 80s. “I want to give your generation (I’m 30) a history class,” he says with a sigh, when, the next day, as we walk through the woods together, I’m forced to admit that I’ve never heard of a sexologist. Annie Sprinkle.
Without the forest, which Volcano tries to walk or circle every day, it would be “very difficult to live here”, he tells me. When we get to the outdoor gym, Volcano tries to back off – stop for a while, not wanting to hurt himself. “I wish I could have shown myself to you today, I’m a little ashamed that I didn’t,” they admit later. A few days later, they send me a WhatsApp video of them doing magic with their child, “just so you can see”.
Whether it’s their gymnastics or painting skills, Volcanoes are eager to show off their talents. Back at the hostel after our walk, they pull out many of their drawings in dresses that are plastered with catchy labels like “trans portraits”, “strong women” and “precious”. They return to bed in the living room as they share stories of their encounters with celebrities, from selling a print to The Matrix co-producer Lilly Wachowski and turning down the infamous Judith Butler’s request to have their photo taken for free, to a brief Romeo & Juliet-esque love affair with a famous journalist friend and famous journalist groups. Volcano’s involvement in S&M activities, which the reporter was not a part of).
Despite having a “very sex life, very busy” in the past, Volcano is currently not in a relationship. They tell me: “I want to have a relationship again in my life. “But no one can match Matt, that’s the problem.” Volcano lived with Wurm for 14 years, and although their marriage was the third for Volcano, it was the only time they got married for love. Their first two marriages, in 1982 and 1995, were gay men – the second, for Johnny Volcano, served the purpose of giving them a good name.
But for now, anything more than a “run out” would probably thwart Volcano’s ambition. He wants to write a memoir eventually, but before it is published, “some people have to die, some have to grow, and some restrictions have to be lifted”. Until then, he is focused on creating what he calls the Queer Archive of Resistance. The main goal is to have a group, somewhere “at least 10 people can come and stay, explore, learn” and review the backlist of artists. They explain that: “I will have old and young, poor and non-poor who will come to visit me in Sweden. I will be telling my stories and showing my pictures and cooking for people, talking to interesting people.”
