Bodies of Resistance, an exhibition devoted to the works of the internationally renowned pioneer of queer art Del LaGrace Volcano (b. 1957), consists of a diverse gallery of photographs of persons, bodies, genders and sexualities that reject society’s heteronormative classifications. The exhibition is composed of photographs taken by Volcano over different decades during their career. It offers a diverse presentation of their portraits, self-portraits and their documentary photographic background as well as various projects from the late 1970s right up to the 2020s.

Del LaGrace Volcano, who was born in California, is a photographic artist, performer and activist. They studied photography at the San Francisco Art Institute, and while living in Britain continued their studies in photographic art with an MA degree at the University of Derby. Today, Volcano lives and works in Örebro in Sweden.

Volcano has pursued a long and productive career depicting and participating in various queer subcultures and communities and engaging in the activism associated with them. Their models are always experiential subjects rather than reified objects of observation. For decades now, Volcano’s photographs have had a considerable and, for many viewers, a personal significance in challenging norms and enriching the imagery of sexuality, gender and corporeality. Different corporeal metamorphoses and the multiplicity of the manifestations of gender identity lie at the heart of their art.

Bodies of Resistance will be Del LaGrace Volcano’s first solo exhibition in Finland. They have held dozens of exhibitions around the world, for example in the Tate Modern and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The exhibition has been organised in cooperation with a queer and trans research project being conducted at the University of Tampere, and both are associated with the 8th Nordic Trans Studies Network Conference to be held in Tampere in February 2023.