The Vaginal Davis Universitet for the Damaged and Gifted

Taking inspiration from Vaginal Davis’ practice as an artist and mentor, The Vaginal Davis Universitet for the Damaged and Gifted is a full day at Tensta konsthall with performances, mini-lectures, workshops, shared meals and surprises. Participants will be introduced to the wonderful world of Vaginal Davis in dialogue with a number of colleagues from near and far, a rarely seen line-up, and receive a certificate at the end of the intensive "day course".

The Vaginal Davis Universitet for the Damaged and Gifted is co-organized by Cecilia Widenheim (Director, Tensta konsthall) and Hendrik Folkerts (Curator of International Contemporary Art and Head of Exhibitions, Moderna Museet). This project is part of the exhibition Magnificent Product, which is initiated by Moderna Museet and extends across several locations in Stockholm: Moderna Museet, Nationalmuseum, Accelerator, Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Tensta konsthall and MDT (Moderna Dansteatern). Each institution highlights a different aspect of Vaginal Davis’s expansive practice.

The exhibition is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Terra Foundation for American Art.

Programme, hour by hour
11.00 AM
Playtime
11.30 AM
School Bell Rung by Cecilia Widenheim and Hendrik Folkerts, Dissociative Sparkle Deans
11:30 AM
Synod by Lisa Teasley
11:50 AM
Plenum 1: Periodic Table by Lisa Teasley with Vaginal Davis
12:15 PM
Plenum 2: Stix Omar featuring Bror Ida Lennartsson: Romantic Comedy
1:00 PM
Luncheon
2:15 PM
Plenum 3: Constance Brosse and Olga Rozenblum: Lost Leather - Tales of Serpente
3:00 PM
Plenum 4: Maria Norrman: Altar of Camp
3:45 PM
Recess (High Tea with Dainties or Coffee) Year Book Photo
4:30 PM
Plenum 5: Ron Athey and Hermes Pittakos: The Willendorf Performance
5:40 PM
Plenum 6: Daddy Ron and the Doll
6:00PM
Plenum 7: Physical Exercise: Iris Smeds - Death Yoga
6:45PM
Recess
7:00PM
Plenum 8: Radical Love (Samuel Girma and Sam Hultin) with edibles
8:30PM
Commencement (Pomp, Stank und Circumstance)
9:00PM-MIDNIGHT
Plenum 9: BLOW (with BLEACH, Mzamo Nondlwana and others, organized by George Chamoun)
This programme may be subject to changes.

Biographies participants, in order of appearance:

Cecilia Widenheim is Director of Tensta konsthall, and Hendrik Folkerts is Curator of International Art and Head of Exhibitions at Moderna Museet. They are Dissociative Sparkle Deans of The Vaginal Davis Universitet for the Damaged and Gifted.

Lisa Teasley is the author of FLUID Stories, the award-winning story collection Glow in the Dark and the critically acclaimed novels, Dive and Heat Signature. Teasley’s writings have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Chinese, and Arabic, and much anthologized in books such as W.W. Norton anthology Flash Fiction America and Europa Editions The Passenger: California. Teasley is the writer and presenter of the BBC television documentary High School Prom and the opera librettist of The Passion of Nell, which will have its world premiere in 2026. As an artist, Lisa Teasley’s work has shown and/or been performed in many spaces such as the Whitney Biennial, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The Broad Museum.

Vaginal Davis, Founding directrix of The Vaginal Davis Universitet for the Damaged and Gifted.

Ron Athey has been working in a physical, philosophical, and esoteric performance practice ranging from solo work to 40-person operas. Evolving out of Los Angeles underground music scenes, he started showing Premature Ejaculation in 1981, influenced by performance legend Johanna Went, noise pioneers Throbbing Gristle, the Viennese Actionists, and post-porn modernist Annie Sprinkle. His 1990s response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic created a trilogy of company work that resonated first person in that disastrous time period. When under heat from the mid-1990s culture wars in the US, Athey made second homes at the Institute of ICA- London; Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana; and Ex Teresa Arte Actual, Ciudad de México, as well as first development residencies at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, and Kampnagel, Hamburg. Embracing and fighting labels such as abject, AIDS, and post-porn, Athey considers archetype work the connecting thread through each era. He has collaborated on vocal-based projects with Juliana Snapper, Opera Povera, and has an upcoming non-lingual vocal project with Carmina Escobar (Vox Clamantis). In 2021, the Amelia Jones–curated survey show Queer Communion: Ron Athey opened at Participant Inc, New York, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, with performances, workshops, talks, and screenings. 

Hermes Pittakos is a Cypriot sculptor, performer, and coach for creatives. He studied Fine Art in Manchester, before moving to London where he received his BA in Character Development & Prosthetics makeup for Performance at London College of Fashion. His research is deeply invested in esoteric works, philosophy, and classic myths, reading them as guides to understand our present and mold our journey ahead. His work is also rooted in themes of transformation and rebirth, mythology, rituals, and the psyche’s healing abilities. In 2011, in London he met and collaborated with Athey, creating a strong artistic bond and friendship with him that carries through to today. Acephalous Monster (2018) was their first major performance collaboration, which Hermes art directed and performed. After which they continued collaborating, producing show props, masks, and sets together, a collection of which were on show at the Athey survey show, Queer Communion. Since then they have been making films and have produced Darkness Visible, a 10 day performance making Workshop/bootcamp . Hermes has also produced sculpture work for Peaches that was shown at Kunstverein Hamburg, collaborated with movement performer Federica Duari, and directed and made costume prosthetics for MOLT, a performance shown at No New Idols, in Riga, Latvia. 

Constance Brosse graduated from HEAD-Geneva in visual arts. Since 2019, she has been developing a documentary and experimental film and writing practice that focuses on the transmission of knowledge, feminist communities and practices, sexuality and their inscription in the political field. Constance Brosse also participates in collective programming projects in Geneva, with the Collectif Occasionnel, on issues related to sex work, and with the Dyke-O-Rama collective, on the valorization of dyke cultures. She is also a member of the committee of Lestime, a lesbian and feminist association in Geneva, where she takes care with other members of the archive collection, focusing on its valorisation. In collaboration with Olga Rozenblum. 

Stix Omar studied at Malmö Art Academy before moving to Berlin to become a popstar. In 2010 they started working with producer Maximilian Boss on the multidisciplinary project Easter; a genre-breaking band that has been releasing five albums and toured big parts of the world, alongside an online soap opera named Sadness is An Evil Gas Inside of me. The series is narrated by the one and only Vaginal Davis. Stix Omar is invested in language and performance. Enjoying collaboration as motivation and a constant practise in discipline Omar is working with friends,  choreographers and directors on music, performance, fashion and film. Romantic Comedy is an experimental solo project where text delivery switches between poetry, song, standup comedy and prayer. For the performance at Tensta konsthall and The Vaginal Davis Universitet for the Damaged and Gifted, Omar has invited Bror Ida Lennartsson to contribute with WHITE M / U / U slavught (01013, a sculpture that they will mingle with throughout the comedy.

Maria Norrman is a visual artist who works with video and photography in combination with performance and costume making. Norrman often uses herself and different characters in her work which allows her to put her appearance and gender expressions in relation to the participants. Norrman often works with long term projects such as her drag persona Millennium Star, which was created in 2012, and her 20+ years ongoing obsessive relation to French dancer Jane Avril (1868-1943) Maria Norrman received her MFA from Malmö Art Academy in 2013. Her work has been shown at galleries and museums such as Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Los Angeles 2023; Galleri Ping-Pong, Malmö 2021; Gotland Art Museum, Visby, 2017 and Aros Art Museum, Aarhus, 2014. In 2023 she received the Barbro and Holger Bäckström grant from Malmö Art Museum. 

Iris Smeds lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. Her work has revolved around the individual's marketability and examines our existence and society from a poetic and performative perspective. Her project often blurs the boundaries between installation, performance and moving image, with a theatrical and surreal imagery. Since 2013, she has also run the one-woman punk band Vaska Fimpen. Currently she is working on a long term film project called The Little House In the Food Court about a theatre group that puts up their own version of The Little House on the Prairie in an abandoned food court. Iris Smeds works have been shown at Moderna Museet (2022), Malmö Konstmuseum (2023), Mint (2023), The Luleå Biennial (2020) and Bonniers Konsthall (2019).

Samuel Girma and Sam Hultin explore practices of care in queer and BIPOC communities as a resistance to the growing neo-fascism, islamophobia, racism and transphobia in the series Radical love: care as resistance. Since the start in 2022 at IASPIS/The Swedish Arts Grants Committee in Stockholm they have arranged a number of events with themes such as self-organized care within trans communities, bell hooks, grief, poetry, history writing and Black queer music. Invited speakers and performers include Hil Malatino, Judith Kiros, Valerie Kyeyune Backström, Zafira Vrba Woodski, Jonelle Twum, Levi Appelton, Asynja Grey and Lynnee Denise among others. Sam Hultin is an artist based in Stockholm. Their work is rooted in their interest in queer histories, identity and community and explores connections between personal experiences and political and social structures. Through city walks, sing-alongs and anniversaries Sam often invites queer communities to activate queer histories together with them. Samuel Girma is a Stockholm based film and art curator, as well as an activist and co-founder of the anti-racist, intersectional and feminist platform Black Queers Sweden. He was born and raised in Ethiopia and moved to Sweden as a 13 year old which has informed his perspective on Blackness and migration. A lot of Samuel’s work, art and writing departs from and centers the experiences of Black bodies.

BLOW was birthed in the Autumn of 2023 by club organizer George Chamoun at the basement venue Sidenkällaren in the form of a gay bar that held space to several different theme nights, release parties and clubs for queer collectives in Stockholm and beyond. It emerged out of the need for a space that celebrates and uplifts gay and queer culture. Now on Summer hiatus, BLOW will be doing pop-ups in numerous places in the Autumn of 2024.

BLEACH, is a prominent drag performer, promoter, and producer based in Berlin. Active in the drag scene since 2017, BLEACH is recognized for hosting and creating various cabaret shows and events. Some notable productions include "Bollocks To Brexit," "POPPERS," and other shows at Monster Ronson’s, a well-known Berlin venue. Additionally, BLEACH has served as the hostess of the Stockholm Cinema Queer Film Festival and the drag festival Stockwig​. BLEACH is also involved in the go drag! festival, an international drag event in Berlin that celebrates diverse drag performances from under-represented artists across the queer community. 

Mzamo Nondlwana is a queer, non-binary performance artist from Johannesburg, South Africa, currently based in Vienna. Their work centers on themes related to marginalized bodies, aiming to challenge and subvert colonial fantasies. Nondlwana's performances often engage with radical queer-feminist movements and address themes of community, collectivity, and transformation. For instance, their piece "Dance for the Future" explores alternative futures by drawing on the experiences of marginalized communities, particularly during the pandemic, to highlight the importance of community as a form of healing.

George Chamoun aka RASUUL is a Swedish-Lebanese club organizer, curator and art educator George Chamoun has initiated several club projects and platforms focusing mainly on queer and progressive culture in Stockholm for the past years, in addition to working as a booker and freelance curator. He is also the co-founder of drag festival STOCKWIG. Currently he is touring with Konstgruppen Ful’s dance show Freedom Movement — Through Baba Karam and other dance conditions, as well as working with the newly opened gay bar/club initiative BLOW. For this evening at Tensta konsthall he will be presenting a curated DJ Set with nostalgic beats from the golden days when House music was still gay, sexy and non-white.