by Roberto Messori120 x 150, 2020Oil on canvasMentioning nailed fetishes instantly conjures images of African wooden statues, often covered in nails or other objects that enhance their sacred power, but the term can be extended to any relic of popular religiosity. Marx extended it to capitalism with his theory of "Commodity Fetishism," and Freud introduced it to sexuality when arousal was provided by substitutes as the primary libidinal objects.
Any painting, if desired, could legitimately be called a "fetish."
It is "our" nailed fetish, increasingly enriched by the matter of the universe, whose secrets we have discovered, and just as every time a nail was driven in to unleash occult powers, we enrich it with ever more power.
