Naked on my Ozgoad  or: Fausthaus – Anal Deep Throat

Vaginal Davis on the Oz books and working on the installation in The Old Library at Nationalmuseum.

Vaginal Davis: Well, for those who haven’t read the Oz books, you should start with the very first one, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.

And he wrote a whole series. They were sort of like the Harry Potter series of their day at the turn of the last century. And he has these, like characters, like the first trans character, Princess Ozma of Oz. She starts off as a little boy who’s like, sort of like, the indentured servant to this witch named Mombi.

And then it’s discovered that the evil witch Mombi had transformed this little – this boy had been transformed into a boy, when the boy was actually a girl, and the princess and rightful ruler and heir to the throne of all Oz. And then at the end, after having all these adventures, the little boy begrudgingly lets Glinda the good…, or lets Mombi under, being forced by Glinda the Good Witch of the South to take his true form, which is that as the Princess Ozma.

And this is a children’s story. So ahead of its time. And then also in The Marvelous Land of Oz, the sequel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which I think came out in 1904, The Marvelous Land of Oz with Princess Ozma Tippetarius, the sort of transgendered character.

There’s also General Jinjur and her army of revolt, and General Jinjur is a teenage girl who decides to throw a coup. That’s my kind of girl. She throws a coup and takes power for herself and for the other girls of the Land of Oz. She takes power and has weapons. Women with weapons.

And who wouldn’t be enthralled by that? A young femme like me, who wouldn’t be enthralled by a character like that taking power from the men?  You know, demanding to be heard. Demanding. Not asking, demanding. And, you know, and because, the author L. Frank Baum, you know, he had relatives who were suffragettes, first-wave feminists.

And, of course, not everything within the Oz world was perfect. You know, this is like 1900 to 1919 when he was writing these books – but talk about it. There was an aspect of it that was quite progressive … these elements in the storyline. Because a lot of the heroines were young girls. Not these boys having adventures, but girls having adventures. and dangerous adventures too. Wasn’t sugar-coated at all.

And I think that’s what piqued my interest at a very young age. I completely related to it and, stayed fascinated by it and then having, you know, in the national Gallery or the National Museum in this installation, the site-specific installations of like drawing on to the walls, making like a sort of mural on the pillars there.

It was a lot of work. It was a lot of work. And then, you know, painting and making a mural with eyeshadow, lipstick, eyeliner, pencils, nail lacquer, nail polish, you know, Michaelangelo wasn’t doing that on the Sistine Chapel.

Oh, it was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, you know? I would leave the National Museum’s library at the end of the day. From 8.00 AM to about 5:00 PM we’d be there for the whole week. So, I was here. When I first got here, I’d be so exhausted. I could barely move. I don’t know how I was able to walk up the hill back to where I’m staying.

But it was good working with Jonathan Berger, who I’ve been working with since he was 19 and he was a student at Cal Arts, and he was in the class that Ron Athey and I were tag teaming. And he was so talented as this 19-year-old super genius. And then Richard Gabriel Gersch, who is my colleague and fearless leader of the CHEAP collective’s son, is now 30 years old. Who I’ve actually been working with since he was like seven years old, six, seven years old.

He’s been working not only with the CHEAP Collective but with me too. So, we have… it’s all about all these histories. These intertwined histories with people, that just continue and grow. And then, of course, meeting all the wonderful people at the Nationalmuseum, in the national galleries, there who are putting up my portraits and then everybody here at Moderna and Index. Meeting all these people and the interrelations I’ve had with people who I’ve taught, who are students, who are now colleagues at Malmö Art Academy, and whatnot. It’s like there’s a method to this madness and all these relationships which I don’t think that people completely quite understand that aspect of it.