Venus Raven is a body art and fetish performer, photographer, thespian and founder/co-founder of the London Fetish Film Festival and Glimpse of Kink exhibition that premiered at Soho’s Bateman Gallery this year! We interviewed her for the Torture Garden blog…

You’re definitely the queen of all things dark and extreme – what motivates you to keep pushing both your own boundaries and that of your co-performers and audience? 

Creative madness / divine mania, fear of death, absurdity, humour, the craving for a transcendental state, even if fleeting. A massive middle finger to the mundane, the breaking free from the claustrophobia of a society that dies without first living. 

What or who inspires you? 

Driven, restless and creatively relentless artists and humans. Diamanda Galas and Ron Athey being two of my biggest inspirations. All fearless artists that challenge the so called normality, whatever that warped thing is. 

You often have religious themes in your performance art – where does this influence come from? 

My upbringing in a Greek Christian Orthodox family.

If you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be? 

Start as soon as you feel that first desire within yourself. Follow your gut and intuition. Study your field. Find creative partners you can trust. Strengthen your response to critique; as one of my favourite quotes says, ‘Opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one.’

Who would play you in a film? 

Playing myself in the form of a preserved corpse puppeteer by the gravediggers. Alternatively, my girlfriend wearing a costume made out of my skin.

If money was no object, what would you do? 

Travel the world on sailing boat meets dungeon meets floating castle.

What is on your bucket list? What do you still want to achieve? 

To take my performances to museums, academic institutions and large theatres, creating large-scale shows that merge performance art with theatrical and operatic elements.

What is your favourite (untrue) rumour/ story that you have heard about yourself? 

Too many to (re)count! Sometimes we lose to lies but as another favourite quote goes, “If I can’t be victorious, let me be notorious.’ 

In recent years you’ve been a founder/co-founder of both the London Fetish Film Festival, and A Glimpse of Kink exhibition. What led you to want to run these events, and what’s your vision for the future? 

The desire to bring the fetish community together through film and photography, two media that have always been extremely close to my heart. Wishing for and working towards a future without censorship. Educating the public about how kink can be ethical. Ending the myth that body art and blood play in particular are linked to an unbalanced mental health with undertones of self harm and not to the absence of a societal support of the spiritual, the ecstatic, the otherworldly, the sacred merging with the profane and the risk / fear / catharsis elements which I feel we must welcome back into our individual and communal psyche and experience.

You can find out more about Venus here: http://venusraven.com/. You can follow her on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook; London Fetish Film Festival on Facebook and Instagram; and Glimpse of Kink on Facebook and Instagram