“Privacy ceased to exist for me the moment I became controversial,” emerging artist Qualeasha Wood said in a conversation.
The New Jersey-born artist’s works—genre tapestries that weave webcam-worthy selfies with internet imagery and Catholic iconography—have earned a spot on many artists to watch lists over the years. last two years. Now his first European solo exhibition”TL; DRopens this week at the Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in London. The planned show will feature new Jacquard tapestries as well as Wood’s newer tuftings, a body of work that is being presented to the public for the first time.
But the sudden acclaim of the art world was not without growing pains.
“I did not expect in many ways how being a public figure, not only in my works but also in the art world, would affect my practice and my mental health. As well as my relationship with my body and my own self-image,” she explained.
Qualeasha wood, Clout Chasin (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery.
Last year, aged 25, Qualeasha Wood (b. 1996) became one of the youngest artists to acquire a work from the Metropolitan Museum of Art when her tapestry THE [Black] Madonna / Whore Complex (2021) entered the collection. With its mix of eras of imagery, the tapestry presents Wood as an internet-age Virgin Mary, with the stigmata on her palms and a Sacred Heart within her grasp. Internet chat boxes for a “hot young ebony” float like clouds around her.
In cataloging the work, the museum wrote, “By presenting herself as both a sacred icon and an object of desire, Wood rejects the racist and sexist stereotype that views black women solely as commodities of promiscuity; it accomplishes this movement by consecrating and controlling its own image.
But Wood, an RISD graduate with a master’s degree in photography from the Cranbrook Academy of Fine Art, would say that with the recognition of the work comes a sense of loss of control. “I felt overwhelmed and took a step back after that. The works in this new exhibition are about this moment of treatment and healing,” she noted.
Despite her young age, the artist has been involved in conversations on the Internet since childhood. Raised along the Jersey Shore as the daughter of two military veterans, Wood had started gaming on her family’s big computer as a child. She said she spent most of the years between 2012 and 2019 in internet spaces, describing herself as “chronically online”. At RISD, amid an almost all-white student environment, Wood first began exploring the visual language of voyeurism as a queer black woman on the internet, an arena where she was pressured into conforming to certain roles.
Qualeasha wood, It separates me, this time (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery.
Wood did not comply, much to the anger of the internet, and at age 25 she had been doxxed twice, once in the middle of the 2016 election and another time for simple crowdfunding for Beyoncé tickets. . Several works in the new exhibition deal with these experiences in which private information and images of Wood were leaked online and in which she received threats of physical violence. The tapestries often include screenshots of the comments she was tagged in.
His recent works also address issues of control on the other side of success. “The hardest part was people completely disassociating the images in my tapestries from me as a person. People don’t recognize me even when I look exactly the same. Or they don’t expect me to sounds a certain way, because of my Jersey Shore accent, ”she explained. She points to the tapestry Cloud backup, in the exhibition, on which the words “How can I make art if I don’t feel attractive?” are woven in pieces.
In making these new works, Wood decided to limit herself to selfies taken over the past year – a conscious decision to honor herself where she is now. She takes all of her selfies at home rather than in the studio, and close examination of her artwork often reveals snippets of her home – a potted plant or the corner of a bed frame. She approaches each photo shoot with a very specific playlist (Lana del Rey and Caroline Polachek have been on rotation recently) and a glass of wine. Then she starts shooting.
“I just go on for hours. I just move and click, move and click, and move and click. She also carefully considers her style of dress. In his current works, Wood appears in a white slip-like dress. The artist, who recently got engaged, has reconsidered the shade she once avoided.
“When I started doing work, white was so cliché. But now I’m thinking about my body in a very different context and I’m going to get married. The whole idea of a white dress for a bride representing the innocence, purity and virginity was important,” she explained. “Even when I was a virgin, I was never able to experience that innocence — I had to deal with hypersexualization .”
Qualeasha wood, Cloud backup (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery.
After taking the selfies, Woods manipulates the files, adding layers, some of which hide hidden messages she has layered underneath, before sending the files to a factory in North Carolina. When she receives the tapestries, Wood then spends hours adding traced beadwork, often including halos, angel wings and other religious imagery.
Wood grew up in a mixed Catholic, Baptist, and other Christian faith family, and was fascinated by the ornate interiors of Catholic churches in cities like Philadelphia and New York that her Jamaican-born father’s family attended. She also read the Bible with her mother and remembers being captivated by the miracles and images in the stories, feeling no attachment to whether they were true or not. But inspiration is broader than that. Growing up in New Jersey, she often heard family friends who had converted to Islam greet each other with the phrase “what’s up, my God?” »
“I asked my mother, ‘why do people say that?’ I thought it was local slang. She told me for the Five Percenter sect of Islam, the black man is God,” Wood said.
The tapestries became a way for her to view herself through a sacred lens. “I went to college and I’m queer and trying to figure out my place in the world and being told that as a woman I have to be a certain way,” she noted. . “The selfies and the tapestries were born from a place of recognition that I could never be myself if I didn’t create a space to be myself.”
Qualeasha wood, Free time! (2023). Courtesy of the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery.
Today, Wood creates upholstery alongside its Jacquard tapestries. These works employ a distinct visual language, a naïve aesthetic that draws inspiration from cartoon animations with their inherent racial stereotypes.
“If I’m in the middle, the tapestries exist simultaneously and into the future, while the tufts exist simultaneously and into the past,” she said. “The tufts emerge from fragments of childhood memory and formative moments or trauma that are now difficult to fully grasp and in which the perspective is constantly shifting.”
In the weeks leading up to the show, Wood, who was based in Brooklyn, was packing up and moving to Philadelphia (she was preparing the last of her studio the day we spoke). She gives herself some space on the internet and tells me she’s working on a writing project – a horror movie. “It’s about an interracial couple who go to a cabin in the woods to find it’s being haunted by a lesbian ghost,” she said with a smile. She is also preparing for her wedding.
Wood, for her part, hasn’t lost her wonder at the IRL life and said there are certainly beautiful parts to success — she especially hopes she can mentor and inspire kids like her. “The other day I was in Philadelphia and I was in the Sanrio Hello Kitty store when a girl recognized me. She was like, ‘oh my God, are you Qualeasha?’ Then we had a nice little chat. When she left the store, I heard her scream, ‘That was really her!'” Wood said. her was me.”
“TL; DRis on display at the Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, 6 Heddon St, London, from May 5 to June 4.
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