Kourtney Roy: In Dreams You’re Mine

Kourtney Roy’s series ‘In Dreams You’re Mine’ (2019) is a vivid journey into an uncanny world of fantasy, femininity, and intuition. Created during an artist residency in Cadaqués, Spain—former home of Salvador Dalí—the series draws inspiration from the eccentricity of the landscape, the surrealist legacy of the region, and the glamorous, enigmatic presence of figures like 1960s disco icon Amanda Lear; Dalí’s close friend and muse.

Roy, who stages and performs each image herself, uses playful in-camera effects—smoke bombs, mirrors, star filters, and bold costume choices—to construct a dreamlike cinematic universe. Although the series title nods to the Roy Orbison song featured in David Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’, Roy resists any direct homage. Instead, she allows her subconscious and surroundings to shape her process, embracing spontaneity and visual experimentation over rigid planning or narrative structure.

The work is filled with mystery and visual tension: a powerful female presence, often hyper-stylised and otherworldly, dominates each frame. While viewers may detect echoes of femme-fatale archetypes from a variety of cultural references, such as ‘Attack of the 50 Foot Woman’ or even Gustav Klimt’s ‘Judith I’ (1901), Roy’s intention is not to make statements but to open portals into strange, beautiful worlds of her own making.

‘In Dreams You’re Mine‘ is a celebration of artifice, intuition, and visual seduction—a world where danger and desire linger just beneath the surface, and meaning is as fluid as the smoke that swirls through her frames.