A live artist talk and presentation by internationally renowned artist, photographer, writer and cultural producer Del LaGrace Volcano.

Del LaGrace Volcano is an internationally renowned artist, photographer, writer, and cultural producer whose work has been part of creating queer visual culture for over five decades.

Born in California in 1957 and now based in Sweden, Volcano lived in London, on and off, from 1982 to 2006, and made the majority of their work in the UK. Their images do more than document LGBTQI+ lives: they have helped shape the visual languages through which queer, lesbian, trans, intersex, and gender-nonconforming communities have seen themselves, recognised one another, and imagined new ways of living.

Working across portraiture, self-portraiture, performance, archives, and publication, Volcano has consistently challenged normative ideas of gender, sexuality, embodiment, and desire.

From Love Bites (1991), a landmark intervention into lesbian erotic culture, to The Drag King Book (1999) with Jack Halberstam, Sublime Mutations (2000) with Jay Prosser, Sex Works (2005) with Paul Preciado, Femmes of Power (2008) with Professor Ulrika Dahl, and QUEER DYKE CRUISING (2024), Volcano’s work has expanded the cultural space in which queer lives can appear with complexity, agency, humour, beauty, and defiance.

Volcano’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tampere Art Museum, and Künstlerhaus Bethanien. In 2025, Volcano was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from UWE Bristol. In summer 2026, two solo exhibitions bring this ongoing body of work into renewed focus: Sensual & Mutual at Auto Italia, London, opening 15 July 2026, and Love Bites Back at the Edinburgh Arts Festival, 16–30 August 2026.

At the same time, Volcano remains deeply engaged in making new work. Recent projects include QUEERLY HETEROSEXUAL, which turns toward a previously neglected demographic: heterosexuals willing to interrogate their own sexual identities. Alongside exhibiting work from The Queer Archive of Resistance, Volcano continues to produce new images, give talks, and perform spoken word across Europe, extending a practice that is asalive, curious, and disruptive now as it has ever been.

Image: MOMMY QUEEREST Jeannine Della-Grace, San Luis Obispo, California (1979). Archival print. Courtesy of the artist.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is a multi-venue platform showcasing contemporary art through collaborations with Irish curators.

Arts in Action is the flagship public arts, performance and creative engagement programme of the Institute for Creativity at the University of Galway.

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