NYWIFT Blog

By Ana Juanola

Welcome to NYWIFT, Laetitia Ky!

Laetitia Ky is an artist and actress from Côte d’Ivoire whose practice moves across hair sculpture, photography, painting, performance, and writing. Using her own body and hair as both material and language, she creates works that explore identity, beauty, Blackness, womanhood, freedom, and the political meaning carried by the body.

Her work, rooted in personal experience, transforms intimate questions into visual statements that resonate far beyond herself. Through her art, she challenges beauty standards, opens conversations around social and cultural issues, and invites audiences to see the body as a site of memory, resistance, and possibility.

 

 

Could you give our readers a brief introduction to yourself? 

My name is Laetitia Ky. I am an artist and actress from Côte d’Ivoire working across many mediums, mainly hair sculpture, but also photography, painting, performance, and writing.

A lot of my work begins with my own body, and especially my hair, which I use as both a material and a language. Through it, I explore identity, beauty, womanhood, Blackness, freedom, and the way the body can carry both personal and political meaning.

Over time, my practice has expanded into many forms, but the core has remained the same: using art to transform intimate experience into something visual, powerful, and shared.

 

 

What brings you to NYWIFT? 

I am at a moment in my journey where I want to deepen my relationship with film and storytelling on screen. The three movies I acted in showed me how passionate I am about acting. I recently moved to New York City, and coming to NYWIFT is a way for me to step into the film world by being in contact with many incredible women who share a similar passion.

As soon as I came across the organization, I connected with it. Women working together to uplift other women is one of the biggest values I advocate for myself. NYWIFT feels like a meaningful community to connect with women who are shaping that world, while also learning, building relationships, and opening new creative possibilities.

 

What belief or personal philosophy guides the way you approach your art and creative expression? 

I think art should tell the truth of the artist, even when it is not a popular opinion, even when it is not politically correct, even when it is dark or taboo, even when it is not pretty. That is what I try to do. I do not shy away from talking about things my being wants to express, even when I know it can attract backlash, because at least it opens conversation, and everyone can grow from it.

I am very guided by honesty. I do not create just to make something beautiful. I create to say something real, to question what has been normalized, and to make visible emotions or realities that are often ignored. I also believe that what is deeply personal can become deeply universal.

So I trust my own body, memories, contradictions, and experiences as a valid place to begin. For me, vulnerability is not separate from strength. It is often where the strongest work starts.

 

Your work often explores the body as a site of resistance and identity. What first inspired you to approach storytelling in this way? 

It started with my own history. Growing up, I became very aware of how much control society tries to exert over women’s bodies, and especially over Black women’s bodies. Hair was one of my first entry points into that understanding. I grew up in Côte d’Ivoire, a former French colony, and that shaped a lot of the way we see ourselves and beauty standards. I spent all my childhood using dangerous chemicals to make my hair straight because it was the only socially acceptable way to exist.

 When I overcame those beliefs, I realized hair carries so much cultural, political, and emotional weight. My own hair journey led me to question beauty standards, respectability, femininity, and self acceptance. From there, the body became impossible to ignore in my work, because it is where so many tensions live. It is where violence can happen, but also where dignity, imagination, resistance, and transformation begin.

 

Many of your pieces engage with social and political themes. How do you balance artistic expression with activism in your work? 

For me, there is no hard separation between the two. I begin with an image, a feeling, a question, or a tension that feels urgent to me. The political dimension comes naturally because I am responding to real conditions and lived experience. I care a lot about making work that is visually compelling and emotionally layered, because I think art can sometimes reach people more deeply than direct argument.

 

 

Can you share a moment in your career when you realized the impact your work was having on others? 

There have been many touching moments, but one of the strongest was at the very beginning of my journey as an artist. At first, I was simply creating cool geometric shapes for the sake of making beautiful images. There was no real intention behind it yet.

Then, when I went viral for the first time, I started receiving many messages from women, especially Black women, all over the world, thanking me because my images helped them realize how beautiful their own hair is. Those messages were the click for me. They made me realize that what I was doing was impacting people in a positive way. That was also the moment I started associating storytelling with the beautiful shapes.

Those messages meant a lot to me because even though my work was not intentionally political at first, it still came from a very personal place. I started creating those shapes at a moment when I was deeply struggling to love my own hair, when I needed to prove to myself that my hair and body had worth.

Realizing that something that began as my own process of questioning and healing could help others feel seen, proud, or empowered made me understand that the work was living beyond me. It was no longer only mine. That is maybe when I understood that I needed to be responsible and deeply truthful with it.

 

Looking ahead, what kinds of projects or collaborations are you most excited to explore next? 

I am very excited to keep expanding into the film industry as an actress. I want to take part in projects that bring together art and cinema in a beautiful way. I am especially interested in inventive collaborations, whether with filmmakers, actors, writers, composers, or cultural institutions. I am also excited by projects that allow me to fully express deep parts of myself.

 

Connect with Laetitia Ky on Instagram or TikTok @laetitiaky

 

(All photos courtesy of Laetitia Ky)