I knew Oscar before I knew O.B. de Alessi. Oscar doesn’t exist. Or maybe it’s the other way around. That’s one of the many aspects of genius to be found in de Alessi’s work: she morphs into her art in such a way that you can no longer find the seams. Her performance art is an act of continuity, one where the artist is no longer satisfied by conveying an idea through her art but, instead, chooses to become the artwork and convey the message through herself. Fascinated by the concept of dandyism and, yet as a woman, unable, according to Baudelaire, to actually become one, de Alessi has become a dandy by proxy. Oscar is a dandy and, therefore, Alessi is as well. The ideas of dandyism and libertinage have compelled me for quite some time and I have sought out portrayals of them incessantly. And de Alessi’s work is certainly a major discovery. It’s too bad Baudelaire is long gone or else we could have introduced him to our very first female dandy.

I have said numerous times to different people that no one can explain this work better than de Alessi herself. Of course, Oscar could probably do a fine job of it as well.

Your bio says that your work "has a very strong theatrical element that [you] consider related to [your] interest in literature." Are there any particular pieces of literature or schools of literature that have had a particularly strong influence on your work?

I have been very much influenced by 19th century literature, especially by authors such as Oscar Wilde, J.K. Huysmans, Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. Some of my works are actually directly related to these figures. In the performance/installation 'Oscar' for example I impersonated a stereotype of the 'dandy', albeit immediately subverted by the fact that I am a woman, and the 'dandy' cannot be a woman (see Baudelaire). But this character was created with a mixture of many characters, both fictional and non-fictional, such as, Oscar Wilde, of course, and [Huysman’s character] Des Esseintes. I actually followed step by step the description of Des Esseintes' studio in Against Nature to create the environment.

I have also always been interested in merging different spheres of culture, such as literature and history with popular culture. In the last large scale installation I did Written in The Stars, for example, I used references to both pop music and culture (in this case, mainly Michael Jackson) and literature (J.M. Barrie, Lewis Carroll, etc..)

How do you choose these characters? In other words, are the facets of their personality determined by what you want to do artistically? Or visa versa?

The characters I have chosen so far all come from an attempt to exteriorize what I perceive as being my 'inner ego' (or egos). The fulcrum of my work, especially of the performative kind, is the role-playing I used to do as a kid. I consider those moments as the purest, most honest ones in my life, as I was able to completely express my self through the impersonation of my own idea of what a character would have been like. This is what I am trying to recreate in my performances. I also think the element of 'failure' is a very important one in my work, because I am already aware that I will never be able to exactly recreate what I used to feel as a kid. So my work is always already impossibly striving to achieve something that is unachievable as a physical object/situation.

Also, I am very much interested in the idea of levels of fiction, by which I mean that one can talk about real life experiences through the use of a universally recognizable (or nearly so) icon.

In Written in the Stars, for instance, the subject of the work seemed immediately to be 'Michael Jackson'. But, in fact, I wasn't talking about him at all. I was rather talking about myself, what I experienced through his image/work as a kid and my own interpretation of him. I would therefore say that all these works could be described as “self-portraits with a mask on."