Qualeasha Wood’s tapestries translate digital realms into something “permanent, distorted and tactile”

The artist Qualeasha Wood finds inspiration for her intricate woven textiles everywhere in the online world. “Theory, fanfiction, music videos, films, and museum visits all hold equal weight for me”, she tells us. “My biggest creative influences tend to come from music and film – artists like Solange, Grimes, and Björk have shaped my thinking, while visually, I’m drawn to the work of Hype Williams and David and Brandon Cronenberg.”

Merging an unexpected set of influences that defy traditional references for textiles, her pieces “often begin with images sourced from the internet, personal archives, or screenshots” which she carefully translates into jacquard woven tapestries or tufted pieces using a digital loom. This process takes the pixels that make up digital imagery into weaving patterns for computer-controlled looms that carefully construct images from flat patterned textiles. The large-scale, multilayered results take early internet aesthetics into wool – an unexpectedly soft, slow and tactile material to hold cursors and error codes.

The meeting of digital and analogue intersects with themes of representation and identity: “My work examines the construction of identity, specifically Black Femme identity, across both digital and personal histories,” Qualeasha shares. From this foundation, she engages in conversations about “autonomy, desire, mental health and body image”, conversations that remain categorically “under explored” in discussions surrounding Black women and the internet. Instead, Qualeasha’s tapestries challenge this erasure in all of their permanence, asserting that “we too exist within the shape of these cultural landscapes”, she ends.