Laurie Victor Kay x Artist Hands as Instrument
University of Nebraska Medical Center, Healing Arts Program

Multimedia artist Laurie Victor Kay exhibited new work in Artist Hands as Instrument, exploring the body, pain, and art-making in partnership with the Healing Arts Program at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). The exhibition opened on November 20, 2024. 

In 2022, Laurie Victor Kay underwent two major hand surgeries—carpometacarpal (CMC) arthroplasties—performed by Daniel D. Firestone, MD, which involved bone removal and new joints in each thumb. Not long after her mother passed after a battle with cancer. “I was experiencing pain on so many levels,” says the artist. “It gave me a very unique perspective and urgency to create work that addresses our shared experiences, constructed imagination, and the surreal.” Throughout the work in the exhibition, Laurie Victor Kay challenges our understanding and visualization of the human body and the nature of physical as well as metaphorical pain as part of her larger practice emphasizing seemingly opposing elements as a means to visualize psychological landscapes and the structural interactions between nature and the inorganic.

The exhibition features a broad range of the multimedia work that reorients the viewer’s relationship to corporeal reality, including depictions of cancer cells that form landscapes, holographic works animated by Laurel Ybarra of iEXCEL featuring original artwork created at the time of the artist’s surgery as well as current scans of the artist’s hands, abstractions inspired by the artist’s longtime interest in Cubism and Surrealism, an interactive documentary, and more. Escapism is an essential motive throughout Laurie Victor Kay’s work, exemplified by a site-specific video that takes viewers into dreamlike memory with imagery spanning the Aegean Sea, cherry trees in southern France, and other ethereal subject matter. 

Taking advantage of the Healing Arts Program’s 9200 sq. ft. center boasting cutting-edge technology—including an 8k infinity wall, an interactive digital virtual touch wall, a holographic theater, and more—the exhibition also examines how the aura of art is changing in the face of rapid advancements in technology that make art more shareable, digital, or even holographic. With exhibitions such as this, the Healing Arts Program merges contemporary art, technology, and science.