Section:GDN 12 PaGe:11 Edition Date:190815 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 14/8/2019 17:25 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
- The Guardian
Thursday 15 August 2019 11
I took this shot in 1995 in my home studio in
Highbury Hill, London. At that point, I was in
a liminal state with my gender: I was moving
from being perceived as female to being
perceived as male, but really I was coming to
terms with the fact I was born intersex.
I was not transitioning. I had no interest
in moving from one fi xed point to another.
The spaces in-between have always been so
much more interesting to me. But this period
felt like a turning point in my uncovering the
ambiguity in my gender that had always been
there. I felt it needed documenting.
For my whole life, I was terrifi ed of not being
perceived as adequately feminine, both by
straight people and by the lesbian community
I was a part of. Because of that fear, I had
plucked out the hairs sprouting on my chin – I
literally pulled them out with tweezers as
soon as they were visible. But I had entered
a competition for Drag Kings at the National
Film Theatre, and my partner at the time was
more into my masculinity than my femininity,
so it felt like the right time to come to accept
my body.
I went to Italy for a month, and let my
beard grow out for the very fi rst time. It was
intensely liberating. It felt like coming to terms
with myself. When I came back to London
I kept it. This photo matters to me because
it’s ambiguous: I’m sporting the beard, and
playing with masculinity in my pose, but the
blue mascara in my facial hair and makeup on
my face still softens the shot. It felt accurate
and honest , in terms of where I was at that
period of my life.
Self-portraiture is central to my work: it is a
way of me understanding, responding to and
coming to terms with my diff erence. I was born
with an intersex variation , and when pubertyDel LaGrace Volcano
My best shot
‘I was born with an intersex variation. For
years, I hid it. Then I went to Italy and let
my beard grow. It was intensely liberating’
hit I developed asymmetrically: one breast was
much larger than the other, for example.
For years I hid it. I hid what made me
diff erent, and I dealt with years of abuse for
looking diff erent, for being a little fat, for
not conforming. My mother was gorgeous –
fashion-model beautiful – and I didn’t take
after her. I destroyed almost every picture that
survives of me from those years because I felt
disgusting.
Self-portraiture was a way of letting other
people see me as I see myself. It was never a
narcissistic project – I was never interested
in being more beautiful or more attractive
than other people – but it was an attempt to
recuperate a sense of self and worth after years
of that being taken away from me.
I have been photographed and fi lmed a
lot during my life, and much of it presents an
image of me that I fi nd absolutely devastating.
Self-portraiture was me taking a stand, both
for myself and people like me who diff er from
the norm. Because, while I am the subject of
much of my work, it isn’t purely about me.
When people talk about the self-portraiture or
confessional writing, there’s often a pejorative
edge to it, as though you’re being self-indulgent
or as if there’s something wrong with it.
But I think the real question is why you
make yourself the subject of your art, and what
your goal is. Is it to receive absolution? I don’t
need that. Is it to receive attention? Because
I already get plenty.
For me, I’m presenting
myself in the hope
that others like me
will understand that
their diff erence is
valuable, that they
can be out and proud
and unapologetic, that
they do not have to
conform.
Self-portraiture has
been popular among
women and queer
people and minorities
throughout time,
from Claude Cahun
last century to Zanele
Muholi today. I think
for us, and for me, it’s
because we realise
that the personal is
political. This is our
form of resistance.
There’s now an
interest in queer
photography and queer
photographers. I don’t
know how deep that is,
or how long it will last.
When the year ends
and we no longer have
the 50th anniversary
of Stonewall as a news hook, will the media
still make space for us? Will galleries still show
our work? Will audiences who aren’t queer still
care? Watch this space.
Interview by Edward Siddons. Del LaGrace
Volcano’s work can be seen at Kiss My Genders
at the Hayward Gallery, London , until
8 September.The CV
Born Orange,
California, 1957.
Training San
Francisco Art
Institute; University
of Derby.
Infl uences Angela
Davis, Claude Cahun,
James Baldwin,
Lee Miller.
High point ‘Selling a
vintage print of my
work The Ceremony
to Lilly Wachowski,
The Matrix director.’
Low point ‘The
many times I’ve been
rejected for grants’
Top tip ‘Persistence
pays off .’says, “I was way more irritated when
Beyoncé said she was the fi rst black
woman. I really like Stormzy and I
think he does a lot of good. I would
never tear that guy down and I
would never start a beef and take
that moment away from him. But
I had to stick up for myself.”
That meant sending a tweet to
the grime artist, correcting the
mistake. “The guy has so much
class. He DM’d me personally and it
was a lovely message. We had a little
conversation. We’re all proud of the
fact he’s a black man, doing the black
man things.”
In terms of Skin’s own voyage with
Skunk Anansie, it was their maiden
tour of the US that contained some of
the oddest occurrences. They sound
a bit like episodes of Louis Theroux’s
Weird Weekends. Skin, in her blunt,
aff ecting way calls it “lunacy”. One
time, they showed up to perform
only to fi nd that their set had been
cancelled due to an anti-fascist
demonstration. “They said, ‘Well,
you have a song called Little Baby
Swasti kkka right?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He
goes, ‘And you’re a skinhead right?’
It’s like, ‘Yeah.’ ‘And the name of
the band is Skunk Anazi?’ I was like
‘NOOOO, it’s Skunk Anansie!’”
Another time, at a US diner , they
noticed the people at the table next
to them had started praying. “We
suddenly realised that they were
praying for us. They were like, ‘Please
God, look after the heathens on the
other table. May they fi nd God and
may they fi nd the word. So, of course,
we acted up.” Towards the end of the
tour, having been caught with weed
at the US border after a stopover in
Canada, Skunk’s whole crew got
sent back to the UK. “We had to get
a new crew in America. They were
the proper typical kind of American
crew: horrible and greasy and slimy.”
The singer, born Deborah Anne
Dyer, lived on military bases – her
dad worked in the Royal Air Force –
before moving to Brixton as a young
girl, just around the corner from her
grandad. “In those days, Brixton was
a black place,” she says with a hint of
nostalgia. “It was one of the places
that white people wouldn’t go to.
There was always a transient level of
people. But Brixton is, underneath
it all, a black community. And that’s
what I grew up in really.”
Her family moved from Jamaica
to the UK as part of the Windrushgeneration , and Skin feels their
connection to music is innate.
“Everyone in my family can sing.
They just didn’t work on it, so they
ain’t got great voices. But if they’d
worked on it, like I did, they would
have been good. I was the one who
had the drive and ambition to do
music and to be successful.” Her
voice is often singled out as one
of the best in rock. She sings, and
articulates in general, from a pure-
sounding place. Husky would never
be the right word. It’s high and
precise with plenty of vibrato.
Skin’s fi rst real exposure to music
was through the shebeens her
grandad would throw – however,
the last time she labelled his parties
as such in an interview, she got in
trouble with her mum. “It was a
shebeen. But for the purposes of this
conversation, let’s pretend it wasn’t
and it was a residential club.” She
pauses. “I don’t care what they say, it
was a shebeen .” Bob Marley was one
of the most lauded visitors, and the
events set her down the path she is
on now. The punters would listen to
ska and Prince Buster, dancing and
drinking the night away.
“My earliest memories,” she says,
“were sitting at the top of the steps
and watching everybody dance
and hang out. And then at a certain
point, we had to go to bed.” Leaving
the party was always a wrench so,
later in life, she fi gured out a way to
stay, at least symbolically. Although
she studied interior design and
computing at university, she quickly
came to know the parameters of what
would constitute personal success.
“Now, I think fame is a big part of
people wanting to be successful. And
it’s a barometer. But for me, being
successful was just, ‘I wanna do that
and I want to do that all day until I die,
and not have to do anything else.’”
For her mum, meanwhile,
Skin wasn’t successful until she
appeared, lithe and glistening, on
Top of the Pops in 1996. “That’s
when my mum stopped moaning
at me and said, ‘Oh, you’re doing all
right! You’re on television.’”
Skunk Anansie’s latest track,
What You Do for Love , is their fi rst
original outing since 2016, and
brings us back around to politics.
Top of the Pops no longer exists,
but Skin believes rock is having a
renaissance thanks to social media
and that, especially in London,
there is a bubbling lesbian, feminist
scene. The track again speaks to the
contradictions and divides we’re
witnessing in society. “The fascists
will say they love God,” she explains.
“You use the word love but you’re
doing really heinous things to a lot of
people. And so that’s just where the
idea for that song came from.”
Despite her strong moral views, I
wonder how it feels to no longer be at
the radical forefront when it comes
to perceptions of marginalised
identities. “We write songs about all
diff erent kinds of things,” she says,
rewrapping the pink patchwork
jacket she’s wearing. “It’s just
you have a black shaven-headed
woman fronting and there are all the
preconceived notions about that.
In actual fact, I never really thought
anything I did was radical at all.”
Skunk Anansie tour until 7 September. PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST‘Stormzy DM’d me
personally and
it was a lovely
message’ ... Skin
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