An Evening with Vaginal Davis

Film

No upcoming events

Held on Mon, Oct 13, 2025, 7:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

Vaginal Davis. The White to Be Angry. 1999. Film still. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin

Join us for a special edition of Modern Mondays, in conjunction with the MoMA PS1 exhibition Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product. Featuring videos from nearly four decades of Ms. Davis’s practice, this Modern “Make Out” Mondays evening spans from the self-proclaimed Blacktress’s beginnings making videos and music in the queercore scene of 1980s Los Angeles to her early visits to Berlin, where she permanently relocated in 2005 and still lives today.

That Fertile Feeling (1983) is an early marker of Vaginal Davis’s satirical approach to race and gender. Starring Ms. Davis and her Afro Sisters bandmate Fertile La Toyah Jackson, the no-budget parody finds the two in trouble when Jackson’s water breaks and she has to give birth to “eleven tuplets.” Ms. Davis’s incisive, irreverent wit extends across the program in Dot (1994), her “treatise on bad acting,” and Mary Magdalene (1999), a trailer for her infamous send-up The White to Be Angry (1999).

Videos such as One Man Ladies (1996), an episode from Glenn Belverio’s cable access television show Glennda and Friends, and Berlin Stories (2001–06) highlight Ms. Davis’s global collaborative network, while later videos made on her cellphone are compelling calls back to the United States through a brief peek into her studio and a rally for action.

The screening will be followed by a conversation with Ms. Davis, moderated by Stuart Comer, “the Porcelain Doll” and Lonti Ebers Chief Curator of Media and Performance at MoMA.

Mary Magdalene. 1999. USA. Directed by Vaginal Davis. 3 min.
Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory. 2020. Germany. Directed by Vaginal Davis. 3 min.
One Man Ladies from Glennda and Friends. 1996. USA. Directed by Glenn Belverio. 29 min.
Defy Authority for New Museum Workers Union. 2019. Germany. Directed by Vaginal Davis.
1 min.
Petrolio for Bortolozzi Gazette Journal. 2020. Germany. Directed by Vaginal Davis. With
music by Carlo Buti. 3 min.
Dot. 1994. USA. Directed by Vaginal Davis. 7 min.
Berlin Stories. 2001–06. Germany. Directed by Vaginal Davis. 12 min.
That Fertile Feeling. 1983. USA. Directed by Keith Holland, John O’Shea. 8 min.
Wo ist Manfred? 2002. USA. Directed by Vaginal Davis. 12 min.

This film accompanies Modern Mondays.
in conjunction with the MoMA PS1 exhibition Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].