Qey Kennedy on "Flight of the Fig Wasp"

Jackson: My name is Jackson. I'm an editor and partner here at Everything Matters Press, and today we're talking with Qey, a Tampa-based writer, filmmaker, and photographer whose work is deeply tied to themes of performance and poetry. Their work also engages with illness, identity, and the human psyche. Qey, it's been a real pleasure getting to know your work, and I'm excited to learn more about it and share it with our readers. So let's kick it off with some general questions before diving into some of your pieces.

What is it that draws you to video art and photography?

Qey: I've been taking photos since I was a little kid. My father's a photographer, and as long as I can remember, he was introducing me to different cameras. We'd go out and shoot together, and it was just this thing that brought us closer.

Then, in middle school and high school, I started playing around with video—making short-form stuff on YouTube, Vine, editing fan music videos, remixing, and experimenting. At some point, I realized that I loved telling stories visually. I eventually moved on from just editing other people's work to making my own.

Jackson: That's so cool. What are you shooting on these days?

Qey: Previously, I mostly used a Canon SL3, which is like a beginner-friendly camera. Some people think photography and videography are super inaccessible like you need some crazy expensive $3,000 camera to make things look good. It's amazing what you can do with a $500 camera.

Right now I'm using a Fujifilm XH2 and an X-T30ii.

Jackson: How do your identities influence your creative practice?

Qey: My mother's Puerto Rican, and my father's African American. In Florida, I felt like there were more parts of myself I could access like I wasn't compartmentalizing as much. In Alabama, especially in the Deep South, there's more bigotry, especially toward Spanish-speaking communities. So there's a cultural shock between the two places, and that contrast shaped a lot of how I see the world.

Moving from the Deep South to Florida, I felt like there were more spaces where I could be my full self. In Alabama, people tend to see you as one thing or another. In Florida, I could exist in multiple spaces more freely. But there's still a weird tension in both places, depending on where you are.

Jackson: Switching gears—how do photography and moving images interact in your work? Does your voice change between the two?

Qey: They go hand in hand. My photography is very cinematic—I try to make still images feel like they have movement. And then my films are dreamlike and surreal, so there's a throughline between them. Everything I make has a certain tone and a certain visual language that ties it together.

Jackson: That dreamlike quality comes through in Nightmare. How does illness play into your work? And how do you translate something like that into audiovisual media?

Qey: So, I've always been chronically ill, but in 2020, my health got way worse. It completely changed my life—I became disabled, I couldn't work a traditional job, and suddenly I had to process that whole shift. And I struggled with how to communicate it.

I realized the best way to do that was to put people in my shoes. In Headworms, one of my short films, I tried to visually recreate what it feels like to have a migraine—distorted visuals, overwhelming sounds, ringing, harsh light. I wanted to make the audience physically uncomfortable so they could experience, in some small way, what it's like to live in my body.

Jackson: On a physical level — if you're comfortable sharing — how do you manage your disability/chronic illness as an artist?

Qey: It's been a learning curve, especially with photography and video editing because it's a lot of using your hands and fingers. As for me, my hands and fingers will lock up for periods. Ultimately the biggest thing that I've had to learn is when to stop and slow down and give myself time because usually once I'm inspired, I just go for it and keep going until I drop. I've also learned that it's OK to step back and take breaks. I'll use wrist guards when I'm out shooting sometimes, or I'll bring my cane or sometimes a wheelchair. I always make sure to not forget myself as a tool, and that I need to be taken care of.

Until recently, I wasn't very open about personal stuff. But after my diagnosis, I felt like I had to talk about it—because I felt so alone. I started making work not just for myself, but for others who might be going through similar things. It became less about just making art and more about making connections.

Jackson: Let's talk influences. What artists, filmmakers, or writers have shaped your creative practice?

Qey: For photography, definitely Laura Letinsky. I love how she captures the mundane and plays with color and light.

For film, Ari Aster. Hereditary, Midsommar—huge influences. The way he blends psychological horror with surreal imagery really pushed me to experiment with my own visuals.

In terms of writing, Mona Awad. She explores chronic illness and surrealism in a way that really resonates with me.

Jackson: What was it like growing up with your dad doing photography? And learning alongside him?

Qey: It was amazing. I don't think I'd be where I am now without him. He's one of my best friends, honestly, because we had that bonding experience growing up. Even now, it's funny—if I get a new camera, I'll call him like, "Hey, you want to test this out?" Or I'll show him a piece of writing or a screenplay I'm working on, and he'll be like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing." We're always bouncing ideas off each other. He's a huge influence and inspiration for me.

Jackson: Gotcha. So, let's get to the fun part, let's dive into The Nightmare. How would you describe it?

Qey: The Nightmare is exactly what it sounds like. It's the culmination of someone falling asleep— all the anxiety and surrealism that come with experiencing a nightmare. It's based on a dream I had. As soon as I woke up from it, I knew I needed to turn it into something visual. It was just so creepy, so sensory, and so weird.

Jackson: I was quite mesmerized by some of the manifest content of the nightmare like this deteriorating pastry. What can you tell me about it?

Qey: So, with the pie, I wanted to represent this feeling of decay. I actually had to leave the pie in my garage for four or five days just to get it to rot. I was trying to capture that progression of unease—this contrast between the beauty of the prism and all the vibrant colors, and yet, there's something much more sinister beneath the surface. both physical and emotional.

Jackson: It was pretty upsetting to your credit. What should people take away from The Nightmare or from nightmares in general?

Qey: Nightmares force us to face what we fear most, but they also remind us that those fears come from our own minds. Even when the dread feels overwhelming, it eventually fades—sometimes pretty fast. A few hours after waking up, we might not even remember what scared us so much. The power of nightmares—like art—is that they give us a chance to see ourselves from the outside, offering a catharsis.

Jackson: Turning to a different topic. I want to find this piece of yours. Okay, here it is. So, the title of the photo is "What it Means to be a Woman.”  And this was at a gallery exhibition? Could you give us some of the context behind it?

Qey: This was actually in tandem with my thesis film Flight of the Fig Wasp which was shown April 2023. Both pieces, deal with womanhood, femininity, and the very visceral and gruesome truths that aren't pretty to look at. And with this…I tried capturing that by taking very feminine things that are usually very beautiful and making them very gross and hard to look at. Even though you're looking at flowers, glitter, pearls, fruit, and stuff like that, it very much resembles gore.

Jackson: I legit thought some of the things in this image were meat. I had to sit with this for a minute.

Qey: I did want to make it feel very gross and almost flesh to represent the very uncomfortable and…I guess gruesome truths to being a woman. I had jumped back and forth between using a green background just serving as a contrast.

Jackson: But ultimately you decided on pink.

Qey: I'm glad I did because it ties together the femininity of the piece while complementing all of the warmer tones that you see through the grapefruit the crushed apple, the berries…and aids it with the gore and horrific tone.

Jackson: So I understand the fruit and the flowers as well as the gore symbolism. Why the pearls?

Qey: I was relating it towards, clam and oyster iconography, how they're meant to represent female genitalia, how they're also supposed to be like an aphrodisiac. So, by having them intertwined with the gore, so to speak, it was the destruction of, womanhood, virginity, stuff like that.

Jackson: And how many shots and different angles did you take before you got this one? 

Qey: I think I had in total about 200 or 250 different shots from this setup. I'd actually taken this outside. I had a couple that I had done with just natural sunlight, but I feel like adding the flash, adds that other layer of uncanniness and vulnerability to the piece.

Jackson: What would you like audience members to take away from what it means to be a woman?

Qey: Ultimately to think about the title implies. The nuances and the issues that come with being a feminine individual, confronting the more ugly parts of being a woman and what exactly that means. I want people to sit with the discomfort, to recognize that femininity is often constructed through a series of contradictions —the delicate and the grotesque, the celebrated and the discarded, the desired and the disposable.

Jackson: With that, I would love to get into Flight of the Fig Wasp. 

Qey: For this film it was shown as a two-channel installment. So there's the larger piece itself which is 7 minutes and 51 seconds but when I had shown this in my thesis, the first roughly three and a half minutes were shown on one screen and the rest on another. The former as us existing on the same plane, finishing each other's sentences and sharing a lot of the same dialogue. The latter portion of the film it's more of us speaking against each other which works to contrast.

Jackson: Tell me about the name.

Qey: I didn't know that they were a real thing until I was doing research for this project. Essentially they're these very small wasps that are only alive to pollinate figs. Typically the female wasp will crawl into the opening of the fig, pollinate it, and as she goes to crawl inside the fig, her wings will rip off and she'll be stuck inside the fig to essentially die. Once inside, she lays eggs and soon after dies. The children that are born within the fig, feast on her dead body and then burrow holes to leave and pollinate more figs.

With this piece being on generational trauma and mother-daughter relationships and speaking a lot about cycles and not being able to break those cycles and stuff like that, when I first heard about the fig wasps and saw their cycles, I related it to my relationship with my mother. and that she has herself suffered being a woman and even though we are two individuals who are conflicting and…have very different points of view. I still share a lot of similar experiences with her and will simply from the fact that I'm a woman as well.

Jackson: Being a queer woman, how do you think that shapes your perspective when making work about mother-daughter relationships or exploring what it means to be a woman?

Qey: I've been thinking about this a lot recently. I feel like there's a distinct experience shared by people who were assigned female at birth or who move through the world as feminine individuals. There's a specific relationship—with your own body, with the expectations placed on you, and with the people you're expected to be close to, like your parents.

Even though I've divested myself from gender in many ways, the relationship with my mother is still something that remains deeply gendered. It's shaped by how I grew up, how I was socialized, and how I was expected to present myself to the world. That relationship—and my relationship with my own body—still informs my work, even as my understanding of gender continues to evolve.

Jackson: So I love the dialogue. And I was also really interested in this creative decision of the squares and putting you guys on opposite sides. What went into that creative decision?

Qey: Nina Katchadourian had done this piece, Accent Elimination, that featured  a series of interviews with her parents and it was a similar visual language. Each of the videos were shown on separate screens yet showed alongside each other. I took a lot of inspiration from that and with us having the same dialogue but both being about different people. I wanted to separate but also flash at different times on the same screen to show that even though they're two very different instances and experiences, they're both the same dialogue.

Jackson: What was it like working with your mother on this?

Qey: It was racking, really weird, probably the most emotionally, and physically exhausting thing I've ever done. We've always had a difficult relationship. I expected a lot more kickback and resistance, but she surprisingly was very open to it, which I cannot thank her enough for. 

I would arrange the questions ahead of time and have her read them out loud to herself in front of the camera— as I did for myself. So, we used our interview sessions as a confessional to sit down and just lay it all out without any fear of anyone around judging us even…though we knew we were being recorded.

Jackson: I'm also really interested in the decision to make things black and white. It adds a sense of vulnerability to it.

Qey: Mhm. Yeah. So, I wanted to strip any distractors or anything that would take away from the actual dialogue. I wanted to focus more on our forms and what we were saying.

Jackson: I feel like, in terms of content and theme, this is very much in line with the other works I saw of yours in the other videos, but in terms of form…this is a bit of a departure. Is that fair to say? Have you done a lot of other documentaryish, stuff with this style?

Qey: I feel like it's something that I've been exploring a bit more. in the series that I'm working on, with my family back in Huntsville, I have been exploring more of this documentary style, like video art. But it is a departure from what I usually would make. Originally when I was researching to make this film, I had intended to make it a lot more surreal and have surreal visuals thrown in.

But after doing the first round of interviews and watching them back, I realized that for this conversation, it was better to just have it there without any distractions.

Jackson: What did the opening conversations with your mom about…explaining this project and also about I don't know, maybe setting boundaries? What did those look like?

Qey: It was interesting because I didn't want to make her feel uncomfortable. I had to be very explicit in what my goals were for this project — that essentially we may not end up looking the greatest at the end of it and that it was going to be very vulnerable. And I honestly didn't expect her to want to do it after explaining all of that.  But because we had never really spoken and gotten close on that level, she was pretty open to it. I'd also screened it with her a couple of times through the editing process before I showed it to the public as well. Each time she was receptive to it and in my final showing to her we were able to sit down and both hug each other and cry. It [Flight of the Fig Wasp] has helped open more dialogue in a relationship. I wouldn't say our relationship is perfect by any means. It takes a while to work on understanding and…breaking down those cycles, but we've opened the door to more productive and more understanding dialogue.

Jackson: I'm glad. Having talked about opening up, this is some serious opening up … how did your friends and family receive this? What was their reaction?

Qey: It was interesting…because a lot of family at first they were like, “Was this scripted? Were you guys really saying this?" they were surprised by how vulnerable it was. But also thought it was cool that we were both able to put ourselves out there. It sparked good conversations with other people my age and even with my friends. During one of the showings, I had several people come up to me and hug me afterward because they felt that this was one of the first things they had seen to articulate how difficult mother-daughter relationships were.

Even though it was really hard, I'm glad that I decided to show this.

Jackson: I think I had a similar reaction. Until the tears started flowing, I don't know. It was just so shockingly vulnerable. How did you endure editing such a vulnerable piece?

Qey: My gosh. I would say that was the most difficult part of all of this. it was something that I had to tackle for a couple of weeks cause it was very emotionally exhausting to sit there and cut through different clips of you and your mom crying. so I wanted to be kind to myself and not just try and rush through editing it. I would chip away at it through various days and make sure that I was also speaking with my therapist and checking in with myself to make sure that it wasn't too overwhelming.

Jackson: What advice would you give to other artists doing work that is quite emotionally taxing and vulnerable like this, would you have done anything differently yourself? If you were to do it again?

Qey: I would say if there's any advice or anything that I would like to say to someone else who's also making vulnerable art, even though it is very scary and even though I had a lot of moments where I was like, is this worth it? Should I be sharing it? Is it too much?

The fact that even if there's one singular other person that this could help– that this could resonate with– that someone can use it to understand their emotions and know what it is they're feeling and why that makes it worth it. So, it takes a lot to confront your fears and…decide to be very vulnerable with a bunch of people you don't know, but ultimately it is very worth it.

Jackson: When you said people would come up to you and that this piece had an impact on you …what exactly were people saying or what is it that resonated?

Qey: I was surprised…but a lot of people tell me that they had similar experiences, spoken very similar ways, or even just that they had a very difficult relationship with their mother and felt they couldn't vocalize it. I had a couple of people say that they felt taboo to speak about not having a good relationship with their mother. A lot of times when people think of mother-daughter relationships they think best friends like that's like your mini me stuff like that. But it was refreshing to know that so many people were also dealing with similar issues.

Jackson: What's next for you then?

Qey: Currently I'm working on another larger project with my family in Huntsville as well as a larger project for what it means to be a woman. and that's going to include more visceral and very fleshy styles of photography as well as writing and… some portraiture as well.

Jackson: Thank you so much for joining us, Qey. We greatly appreciate it. Super excited to share your work and your thoughts with our readers.

Qey: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you!