Enlisting the humdrum of the average at its most radical, Candy Oscuro reconfigures the fetish as blossoming sexuality, as beauty, and as terror. Oscuro talks to Coveal on the conventions of fetish, darkness, and future projects.

What got you started with your interest in fetish imagery?
There were few aspects that really interested me in fetish imagery. As an artist, sometimes I draw inspiration from real life situations that nobody pays attention to and I try to dig deeper into them. Many times I would find myself at parties and the classic game of truth-or-dare would come up. After a while, the game as we all know, takes a very sexual twist and many times the questions that were asked, revolved around fetishes. I noticed how people were sometimes ashamed when they would be confronted with this topic, myself included at the beginning. I felt an emotion of shame and I tried to investigate why, since fetishes are an absolutely normal part of sexuality.

When I started looking deeper into it, I found out that there were so many fetishes I had never heard of and didn’t even know existed. I found it really interesting both on a psychological and cultural level. Me making fetish imagery is an attempt to bring something out in the open that people might find within themselves and might not accept, admit, or feel shameful about. It is a way to exorcise it if you will. I want my art to be impactful and to be able to also help, and change the way we see things.

Your depictions of housewives and genderbent glam stars are steeped with a hint of horror: pearl stitched masks and sleep paralysis nightmares, images without context. How does your depiction of glam and beauty act contra to existing conventions of understanding fetish?
I think that I have always been attracted to what is prohibited, to what is obscure. Things like taboos, fetish and blasphemy. I am curious by nature to explore certain dimensions. Since I was a child, I was attracted to scary things because I found them extremely beautiful, mysterious, and glamorous. I’ve always seen a lot of beauty in the ugly and I think my work as an artist is discovering, investigating, and sharing that beauty with the world in hope that it can perhaps change the way people look at things. I think that my depiction of glam and beauty in juxtaposition with fetishism in this case is a way to celebrate it and to show people that it’s something beautiful, normal. I believe that living your own perception of beauty and gender is extremely important because it can make you feel free and it can release you from fear.

Fetish means many things at once. It can mean sexually desiring behavior linked to a particular object or part of the body, an inanimate object worshipped, or even excessive, irrational commitment and passion. Has fashioning fetish in your vision changed or added new dimensions to your understanding of fetish?
Fashioning fetishism creates a bridge between the subconscious and ‘secret’ world of fetishes and society. It can adapt and translate this dimension of sexuality into a language that can be accessible to a wider audience. You can find hints of fetishism in the last Gucci Fall 2020 collection and more directly also in the last collection from Richard Quinn, which I really enjoyed. This should just serve as an example to show that art, whether in fashion, music, or in any other form, can be an extremely powerful tool to open up discussions and make people accept things that make them go beyond certain fixed stereotypes.

Is there darkness in secrets?
There is secrets in darkness.

What kind of space do you conjure when creating and taking these fetish-centric photographs?
Depends on the photograph. Sometimes they are absolutely mundane, ordinary places, to normalize the idea of fetishism, like my series “Housewife Fetish”, which was shot in my parents’ country house garden in Tuscany. Others are just supposed to give you the feeling of a no time and place, almost as if they were shot in a parallel reality. I also really like to play with my identity and make my image seem like a caricature. In that way I imagine my alter-ego in peculiar or absurd situations and sometimes when I take a picture I can convey that idea and space quite directly.

Do you have any upcoming projects we can look forward to?
Absolutely, I am working on my solo music project with some really cool people and I am pretty excited to release something soon.