Davis is a key figure in the history of queer music, performance and video art. Naming herself after the activist Angela Davis, she emerged in the queer and punk club performance scene of Los Angeles in the late 1970s.
In addition, Davis is a founding figure in the “homocore” movement that reinterpreted hardcore punk through queer cultures, as well as the art and music networks of the 1990s that influenced the emergence of the feminist punk “riot grrrl” movement.
Davis’ touchstone work, The White to Be Angry (1999), challenges constructions and desires around the topical issue of white-supremacist culture as it circulates across the political spectrum. The title of the video is taken from Davis’ live performances and a music album her band—Pedro, Muriel & Esther (PME)—recorded in Chicago in the mid-1990s.
See http://ARTIC.edu/exhibitions/9441/vaginal-davis-the-white-to-be-angry.