Anatomy of Empathy Through the Art of Laurie Victor Kay. The Interview
From the color blue to the writing, every choice becomes the narration of an intense experience
Laurie Victor Kay transforms the camera into a mirror of autobiographical vulnerability, using photography, video, collage, writing, and installation to reveal deeply personal emotional earths. Conversing with her means entering a world where art becomes an extension of life, where every image and every object tells a deeply intimate story, sometimes painful, sometimes liberating for the soul.
“When I started art school at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I studied painting, drawing, and photography. Over the years, I began using multi-media with my mostly photographic practice intuitively. During the pandemic, I was really able to focus on all areas at once. I started to understand my practice like a color wheel. Some people didn’t understand my many different areas of work, but I kept going. They’d say I needed to focus on one thing or another. I need all of them. Right now, I’m so done with being boxed in, labeled. Artists should be able to work however they want. I want to explore intersections and make new connections through the processes, which include, first and foremost, my life”.
“Empathy is everything to me. I feel things so deeply”, the artist continues. My psychologist, psychiatrist, and therapists have all told me in different ways that this is my superpower and also my Achilles’ heel. Empathy means that I can see others and create from those spaces. Kindness goes right alongside this. I have experienced more pain, meanness, and loss than anyone should in a short time. I lived with panic attacks, insomnia, depression, and as a result of a shit-ton of inner work—meditation, medication, you name it—I am on the other side now. Being able to feel the light and energy now makes me even more empathetic. I want to help others and encourage healing through my art”.
These words immediately reveal the key to her work: an art born from lived experience, introspection, and the desire to connect her own story with that of the viewer. Laurie Victor Kay doesn't just tell images; she tells stories of lives, emotions, fragility, and resilience, making authenticity the beating heart of each of her works.
You began with commercial/editorial photography: how has this experience influenced your artistic vision?
The lens of the commercial and editorial photographic world shaped my views in many ways. I understand the fine line between what is “called art” and what is commercial. I am extremely aware of artists who have walked the line between the two worlds. I have worked more than half my life in this world myself. I’ve seen the invention of digital photography from analogue; I’ve seen Photoshop take over retouching by hand on negatives, and now AI. I have to say this shaped me the most profoundly.
What is real, what is expected of women, and beauty ideals have shaped me. The selection of models (who are represented), how commercial images make people feel, how images are used to sell products, ideas, and the pure persuasiveness of a beautiful image to evoke something, whatever it is. My work commercially was always an attempt to elevate and inspire.
I loved this, whether it was working with an opera company to create visuals for their season campaign, a small designer trying to present their fashion, or a high profile person seeking a portrait that was unique. What sells and what people respond to are fascinating to me. I love the psychology of this.
In the projects "Pathos" and "Apothecary," the body and identity intertwine with everyday and symbolic objects. Can you tell us about the creative process behind these works?
Pathos and Apothecary were created during a time in my life that was upside-down. I’m still looking back right now on the how of this creative experience because they came in two different ways. Apothecary began around 2010, when I was a younger mother. I saw the first wrinkles appear on my face and felt women judging one another through handbags and status.
There was so much pressure. I also had medical diagnoses that came from doctors; anxiety was one of them. The pill bottles I collected represented something else to me, humanlike. What if the prescription was about family dysfunction? What if I started examining my everyday world like my commercial practice with slick, glowy, sexy images of these mundane items?
It’s about the body and identity. The body is extremely important to me. As a young woman, I struggled with eating disorders, as did my late mother, whom I was extremely close to. I saw the body and felt the body my entire life. I became very aware of my identity in my past marriage as well. Female identity was also extremely important in my life.
My mother raised five children alone. She was a warrior and broke stereotypes, leaving a legacy. She died during my creation of Pathos and Apothecary. I know she would love this work.
How did the collaboration with the Healing Arts program at UNMC come about? What fascinated you most about this dialogue between art, science, and healing?
In 2016, I received a commission to do a multi-work installation for a very large new UNMC orthopedics building. My vision was one of hope and possibility, creating landscapes from cancer cells and bright abstractions from broken bones. I was asked to become involved with a new Healing Arts Board over seven years ago. At the time, it was part of the Buffett Cancer Center at UNMC/Nebraska Medicine. Since that time, I’ve seen the program grow statewide. ART HEALS.
The dialogue between art, science, and healing grew in 2020, when I had an idea to do a large-scale projection project during COVID-19. The Gratitude Project was an idea that started in my mind. I wanted to do something that could touch people during this dark time.
The fourteen short videos that I created and projected brought the community together. I learned quickly about the transformative power that technology can have to bring art and messages of healing.
What has been your experience working with technological media such as interactive digital walls, holographic theaters, and 8K installations?
This experience was a very unique opportunity I had in the fall of 2024, to present multi-media works on all the technology in the Davis Global Center, which houses technology unlike any other hospital building in the world. They even treated the first COVID-19 patient with their high-tech biocontainment unit. It is amazing. I had not done a holographic video or been exposed to this prior. I was curious!
The Sony Infinity wall I worked with was three stories tall. The holographic screens were straight from the future. The CAD projection room, as well as a curved Helix projection wall.
For the Artist Hands as Instrument project, I was granted full access to all the technology in the building. I had to go all in. Background: In 2022, I went through two serious hand surgeries due to advanced osteoarthritis. This process, going through the physical pain as an artist and then coming through both surgeries (minus two bones + artificial joints now), changed me.
The empathy I mentioned earlier is something I felt from my hand doctor. He wanted me to share my journey as an artist through the many months-long, debilitating process of hand pain and its effects on my practice.
It was difficult mentally as well. I was excited to share this in different ways through my work. I used Pathos and also created new original works for the event. I worked with people from as far as Shanghai who were passionate about the concept of healing art. I’m so grateful.
How did the collaboration with Desmalter Paris come about? What is the common thread between your visual research and the world of fashion and design?
My collaboration with Desmalter Paris began when I walked into their jewelbox boutique in Paris in the summer of 2024. A conversation about my work and their designs turned into the creation of my first unique design: LVK Liberté. When I met Fedor Savchenko, he loved my work, and I loved his pieces.
I have been stopped all over the world and asked about the LVK Liberté pieces. They are irreverent and very me. There is a past to present modernity as well.
The collaboration and launch of the LVK x DESMALTER collaboration is launching with a special event called the Lauritzen Gardens Antique and Design Show. I had done a collaboration for this event in 2016 with Jim Thompson Thai Silk in Bangkok. The chairs of the show thought my connection with Desmalter Paris would be a very special fit for their nationally attended show.
My community in Omaha truly gets behind ideas in big ways. This project is the result of that. I’m grateful for this beyond words. Being creative and kind, open to new ideas, and thinking big are all themes in my life.
How did you translate your "emotional landscapes" into functional objects, and what struck you most about this fusion of art and craft?
The beauty of being an artist is that I make the rules. I decided a long time ago because the landscapes are psychological escapes to me. They always have been. Even my Métro series represents duality and contrast of the human spirit. Functional objects like those in the Apothecary exist in the same way as my trees and blues. One could say I have a crazy artist's mind, and this is something I embrace.
I love my mind, though I didn’t always during the darkness of my recent struggles. When I live in the present and allow the work to flow, the fusion of this is seamless. My ideas, many of which are in the projects now, were in journals from years ago. They were forming as I was forming who I am today.
My art is my life, and my life is my art. The connection is so real to me. More and more than ever.
What does the color blue mean to you? How do you feel when you find the right shade for your work, and what does it represent for you?
Blue is a noun, verb, adjective, key player, inspiration, and medium. Blue is a medium for me in and of itself. Blue is sea, sky, though, feeling. And I feel more deeply as a result of the right blue. Just last night, I printed a large new blue work titled Blue Composition, Leonora’s Way MMXXV. It took many iterations to get the blue right, not too purple, not too green.
The pigment from my printer was just right. Leonora Carrington seemed a fitting reference for this new work. Bleu x Blue continues to bring me so much. I’m creating this work from a very personal space.
I cannot imagine getting tired of blue… ever. When I moved to my new studio, the first thing I officially bought was Yves Klein blue paint from Paris. It is on my walls in my atelier, along with my blue works. I love how I feel when I look at it.
Stereotypes and female identity. How do these themes emerge differently in your different media (photography, video, installation)?
They are of extreme importance to me. I’ve only just begun here. This is an area I’m very passionate about at the moment, especially because of what I have personally gone through. I will be exploring this more physically in performance and video in the future. Patriarchal structures and systems are so real. I have a lot to express on this.
Have you ever felt resistant to describing moments of crisis or fragility? Has art always been a safe space for you?
Art gave me a safe space to do this, even when I did not feel safe. For some reason, I’ve been able to channel these momenti in molti diversi tipi di arte. Sharing the work with others can for sure feel scary. There is a gulp / deep breath I often take, even after an Instagram post sharing it. Sometimes I resist, and then I say, “Be brave, Laurie.” Literally. I am so brave. This much I know now. I will continue to use my voice to share.
What is the role of writing in your visual projects? Is it a narrative structure or a kind of confession?
The role of writing is huge for me. It is random thoughts, the validity of experience, narration of story, imagination, and also confession, although that conjures up other words for me. I would say writing is part of my color wheel. Maybe it is the center of it.
All I know is that I’m planning to write a lot more. Words matter. I love etymology and the complexity of words. The words we say to ourselves and the words that others say. I used my journals in the past as a sort of “truth of experience”. Looking back, I now know they were a lifeline. Evidentiary matter of a woman in so much pain that she came back to herself. Without the writing, would I remember it the same way? Who knows…
Interview by Fabio Pariante, X • Instagram • Website