Every now and then, someone comes along who can tap into the zeitgeist of the collective and create
something that resonates far beyond the reach of their respective audience.
Vicky Devika is such an example. In March 2020, she decided to go to a grocery chain store in Montreal,
Canada, to make a humorous, tonguein-cheek comment about life during a pandemic. Little did she know that her stunt would move around the globe several times that afternoon. From European news broadcasts to prominent American talk shows, images of the fully rubberized Vicky
were shown along with the always matching gas mask.
“We knew we were going to turn some heads that day, we just didn‘t know how many,” Devika says. “I can‘t say I invented anything new, I just put the heavy-rubber aesthetic in the context of the pandemic, at a time when masks weren‘t widely used and not much was known about how it would all affect almost the entire population of the world.” The partnership between Vicky Devika and photographer Digital Succubus is an unlikely one. Neither of them had set out to work in the fetish milieu, and certainly not to succeed. Although both …