In a world obsessed with aesthetic perfection and filtered narratives, Berlin-based ritual artist, Mean Goddess doesn’t seek approval. Rather, she confronts the comfortable illusions we live in. Her work dares to expose the decay we’ve helped create. She confronts the comfortable illusions we live in while simultaneously daring to expose the decay we’ve helped create. Influenced by voodoo practices, ancestral memory and neolithic myth, she crafts objects that give the feeling of being unearthed, excavated rather than being made.

Her work confronts humanity with the raw, unfiltered ugliness we try so hard to bury—a portal into the filthy truth beneath the surface of power, beauty and control. Each piece is an invocation of discomfort, a call to peel back your own skin and witness the rot beneath. For those willing to engage, her objects serve as ritual tools for navigating the aftermath of personal and collective reckoning, inviting discomfort as a transformative force. Mean Goddess is here to rage at the status quo, and she doesn’t care if it makes you squirm. In fact, she hopes it does.

In this conversation, the Mean Goddess speaks on her alter ego, the charged energy of her materials, and the truths she refuses to look away from.

Lea: Who, or what, is Mean Goddess?

Mean Goddess: Mean Goddess is an alter ego. She's everything I’ve suppressed throughout my life: my darkness. My rage, the parts people find too much, too intense. She’s fictional, but she’s also real. She’s pissed. She wants change. And she channels the rage I’ve carried since I was a child. She is my rage biography. My sex work biography. My art biography. In one.

Lea: What summoned her?

Mean Goddess: Her birth was gradual. Not one moment, but thousands. BLM, Incels, Andrew Tate, Trump, the list is way too long. I kept feeling so much rage that I needed a split between the person I am in daily life and the part that’s deeply emotional and activist. Sex work, especially my work as a dominatrix, was also key. Mean Goddess started forming in childhood and has grown stronger over time. Rage was the seed—suppressed, neglected, ancestral rage.

Lea: What feeds her work?

Mean Goddess: The sad excuse we call humanity. The way humans, again and again, choose the path of greed, power, ignorance. It’s not that we don’t know how to do better; it’s that we don’t want to. As long as that holds true, Mean Goddess will exist. When she’s no longer needed, that’s when we’ll know something has changed.

“My work is confrontational. It disturbs the “peace” people build around them to avoid facing the truth. I don’t knock politely. I tear down the door. Discomfort is my tool. When someone feels provoked, when they flinch or reflect, I know it’s working.”

— Mean Goddess

Lea: What are the sacred materials of Mean Goddess?

Mean Goddess: It began with metal, silver, bronze, brass. Materials that carry weight, that resist softness. Also wax, used for ritual candles and lost-wax casting. Glass followed, mostly for scent. Scent is a portal for me, a trigger, a memory device. Human hair became a medium too, sacred in voodoo, heavy with meaning. Stone and clay are slowly being introduced to my practice as well, as grounding elements. And I have been obsessed with rust, with its slow corrosion, which speaks to time, to exposure. To the rotting world I am witnessing.

One of the more unconventional materials I use is human fluids, saliva, sweat, even cum. In my sex work as a domme, I’ve encountered a kind of sweat that feels chemically charged. Laced with fear, submission, desire. I remember wanting to paint with it because it fascinated me: there’s something in that scent, the smell of surrender, of a body letting go, of psychological unravelling.

Lea: Tell us about your iconography. What are you building, and what does it stand for? I’ve been obsessed with ancient civilisations, tribes, cults and the occult for a few years now.

Mean Goddess: Observing how language plays a big role within all of the above, to communicate in the shadows. To separate from the rest, to talk about the forbidden. As I am building my own world, an oﬀering. Within the current state of human existence, I felt the need to create a language of my own. Something coded, that only the ones in the know understand. So that is what I have been building. Over the past year or so and that I am slowly revealing. It’s a coded system, just like hieroglyphs.

Lea: What role do rituals play in your process?

Mean Goddess: Ritual isn’t a concept in my work; it is the work. It’s the core, the weapon, the way I move through this rotting world. Some rituals are private, meant only for me. Others are custom-designed for the person receiving the piece. Sometimes they empower. Sometimes they hex. I’ve even made rituals for people I didn’t like, rituals to curse. Every object holds that intent. Part spell, part curse, part oﬀering.

Often, I send ritual instructions with the work, a way for the receiver to activate it, to initiate their own relationship with the piece. I want them to feel it, to connect, not just own it. To understand that this isn’t just art, it’s a tool. A survival practice for a world that is rotting.

Lea: What’s the scent of Mean Goddess?

Mean Goddess: Mean Goddess’s world smells like wet soil, rot, roots ripped from the ground. It’s earthy and unsettling. Familiar, but oﬀ. I’m working with a molecule meant to mimic the scent of uprooted roots. It’s uncomfortable, weird, but you can’t stop smelling it.

“My rage isn’t new, it’s inherited. It comes from slavery, from patriarchy, from the weight of being a Black woman. It runs deep through my lineage, through the Tongu Tribe from Ghana’s Volta Region. This rage is generational, ancestral; it just grew and grew over centuries. I now give it form through olfactory relics, neolithic echoes, vodún rituals. I work with what survived: old images, tribal marks, oral stories of the Ewe Clan, my people. It’s an energy I carry, one that moves and speaks through my work.”

— Mean Goddess

Lea: What does vengeance look like in your work?

Mean Goddess: It’s not about that, it’s about letting the rot surface and take shape. My work isn’t always loud. It shows up in the intent behind certain pieces. Sometimes it’s confrontation, sometimes it’s protection, sometimes it’s empowering. I don’t believe in forgiveness for the sake of peace. I want people to feel the discomfort they inflict on others. I’ve been working on a piece that will fill a space with unrelenting screams. People won’t last more than three minutes. But others have endured that pain for lifetimes. This is about truth, gutting it out of people. I don’t necessarily want to heal everything. I want to leave scars, reminders that something fought back, so that it can enable change in the long run.

Lea: Who do you create for? And who do you create against?

Mean Goddess: I create for the exhausted. For those trying to survive a system designed to erase them. I create for those stuck in abusive dynamics, under bosses who belittle them, in homes that don’t see them. I create for the unheard, the unseen, the ones who see things diﬀerently, who do not want to follow the rules, who have no respect for the status quo, who spit on the now. And I create against those who try to keep them silent. Abusers, fascists, misogynists, right-wingers, Andrew Tate fanboys. I create against the power structures that tell people to shut up and comply.

Lea: Who are the sinners? Is it a specific archetype, or are we all infected?

Mean Goddess: The sinners are those who abuse power. In any form—political, sexual, financial, emotional. The manipulators. The ignorant who choose to stay ignorant. Those who walk through the world refusing to see. Right-wingers. Misogynists. Racists. Anyone who thinks their comfort is more valuable than someone else’s freedom. But yes—we're all complicit to a degree. We live in a broken system. Owning a smartphone means someone suﬀered. But that’s not an excuse. The sin is not being trapped, it’s refusing to see the trap and trying to break free.

Lea: Your work is confrontational. What’s been the most uncomfortable reaction you've provoked?

Mean Goddess: Some people might be angry that I place myself above them. That I dare. But I see that as confirmation—it means it worked. Most people, though, are grateful. They feel seen. Some want to worship. That’s when I know I’ve created something real.

Lea: What are the lies you’re tired of watching the world believe?

Mean Goddess: That men are superior to women of all kinds. That white people are superior to people of colour. That humans are superior to nature.

Lea: What would a world ruled by Mean Goddess look like?

Mean Goddess: It wouldn’t be a utopia. But it would be a world without patriarchy, capitalism, racism, and misogyny. Where communication replaces violence. Where people understand their place in nature—not above it, but inside it. Where no one has to shrink to survive.

Lea: Will we survive Mean Goddess? And do we deserve to?

Mean Goddess: We probably will. But whether we deserve to is another story. Right now? Probably not. We’re still circling the same cycles of destruction, ego, and fear. But if her existence can trigger even the smallest shift in awareness, a rupture in perception, then she’s done her part. Mean Goddess is part of an evolution. Like the artists, activists, and ancestors before her, she adds to the collective push forward.

ARTIST: MEAN GODDESS

CREATIVE & FILM DIRECTION: LEA SIMON

PHOTOGRAPHY: JOSHUA EZÉCHIEL

CINEMATOGRAPHY: SONJA MADANI

GAFFER: LOUIS LEGGE

EDIT: LEA SIMON + VERENA ECCARDT

COLOUR GRADING: SEBASTIAN BOLENIUS

SOUND & TITLE DESIGN: MEAN GODDESS

SET DESIGN: JOAN LING LI NESBIT-CHANG

SET ASSISTANCE: JULIA NCHAMADI

STYLING: MI MÄRAK

STYLING ASSISTANCE: ELISABETH KIKO