Qualeasha Wood: TL;DR

Qualeasha Wood is a textile artist whose work contemplates the realities of Black American Femme ontology. Wood was recently included in It’s Time For Me To Go at MoMA PS1, an exhibition of works made during her residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2022. In May 2021, her work was featured on the front cover of Art in America. Within her multi-dimensional tapestries, the artist inhabits a digital avatar that has been with her since childhood. Converting the haptic into the digital, the artist is defining new ground for fine art in the age of Web3. TANK meets Qualeasha Wood to discuss her upcoming exhibition at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, TL;DR, the artist’s first solo show in Europe.

 

 

Lydia Wilford Your first European Solo show has just opened in London. What’s the inspiration for the name, TL;DR? 

 

Qualeasha Wood TL;DR stands for “too long, didn’t read”. The work stems from the processing following the pandemic and the huge upturn in my career. There was a loss and then, ultimately, a rebirth of self. I felt like I was losing a bit of myself – the ability to be a human being, not just an imaginary figure. Whether it’s through a phone screen, a tapestry or a tufting, I felt a constant desire to be vulnerable and honest, especially on social media. Often, when people find out there’s something traumatic or controversial tied to work, that then becomes the narrative. I’m cognisant that, in terms of timing, my career shot off right after George Floyd’s murder. That was when all Black artists were, you know, having their big moment. My friends who hadn’t been showing before were suddenly invited to partake in shows. I had a similar moment where people bought my work left and right. And I remember worrying that one day I would wake up, and it would all just come tumbling down. I am basically at a point now asking: Who am I? I am facing all this pressure from society and the art world about how I look and what I wear. When I needed to make more work,  I became obsessed with this work’s value, especially a selfie and a tapestry work. I don’t fit within a societal standard for how I look. Previously, I have been angry in my tapestries. Recently, I have been focusing more on grief and joy as two sides of the same coin.

 

LW A certain Forever 21 red dress has featured prominently in your previous works. What made you switch to white? What’s the symbolism of that choice? 

 

QW The red dress had this very overtly sexy association. When I met collectors on studio visits, their immediate reaction would be: “Oh, this is so charged”. I’d say, “This is just some dress I owned”. I just swapped the red for the same model in white. I am getting married in a year, and there is a specific symbolism around white dresses; virginal, pure. The assumption of innocence has never been afforded to me, even as a kid. I have always been fighting the idea of being sexualised in my everyday existence. The choice was not to argue for my own innocence, it was about furthering the idea that a white dress on my body produces a particular language, regardless of context or intention. No matter how hard I try, I will never have that moment of not feeling a gaze upon me.

 

LW Your work induces an atmosphere of semi-religious experience, as you borrow from religious iconography, and the tapestries are monumental in size. In TL;DR, you have produced these church-kneelers – objects which feel personal and intimate.

 

QW Recently, I collaborated with [luxury furniture company] Roche Bobois, and I finally got to experiment with what it meant to make an object. I had two different goals for the church kneelers. One, making something that could be fully functional but would require some kind of sacrifice; the second was making something entirely useless. I settled for the in-between. It’s an art object, but it also propels someone to get down on their knees and have a moment, not necessarily to pray, but a meditative moment. The text on the kneelers is from a prayer I often heard in the church or confession, and I just changed the language. When I was younger, I met this guy on Twitter who was interested in praying to me, basically worshipping me. It was never physical. He built an altar with a prayer mat and dedicated it to me. He had a photo of one of my tapestries on this screen in the centre and prayed to it. We’re still in contact. I think the concept of absolution within act is fascinating. I wanted the kneelers to feel approachable – like a dirty trick – where you wonder how it functions within the rest of the gallery space. The colours match the tapestries, and the text is hard to read. In a way, I am trying to force the audience to have a moment of hesitation. 

 

LW How did you find the kneelers? Are they sourced from churches?

 

QW We sourced them from actual churches. Online, on eBay mainly. We wondered how realistic we wanted these pieces to be and decided on just the bare bones. Some churches sell these weird wooden sculptural fragments, and – in an ideal world – I would fill an entire space with these structures. People always ask me if I have ever wanted to show in a church, but I’m more interested in making a structure than showing within one. I want to build my own church in a gallery,

 

LW There’s a lot of fragmented Gothic architecture in the background of your tapestries. It appears as a fantasy realm that greets you as you enter into the digital sphere. 

 

QW I play a lot of video games, and my visual language is inherited from those. I think about entering a portal through to another world and the fragmentation and distortion which occurs through digital processing. Everyone is moving into AI, but I still work with my own software. In Photoshop, there’s this content awareness removal tool. It’s a deletion, but it sources and pulls from other parts of your image. If I bring in one column, I can source it and have it fragment across the screen – allowing for random tweaking – to create something more authentic. After working all this time with digital, I know how a column will weave.

 

LW  There is a dialogue between the haptic and the cybernetic in your work. Is a stitch equivalent to a pixel in your tapestries? 

 

QW Yes, in the tapestries there is quite a literal relationship; every stitch equates to a pixel on the screen. So for every tiny, minute detail, it will render. I think that’s the beauty, and what I love about working with technology over working on a handloom is that if I make a mistake or a typo, it will pick it up. The machine won’t correct it for me – if I don’t delete something, the little pixel trail will still be there. In Power Off, there is blue beading atop all the text boxes, which was where I had a typo but I didn’t want to do it over again. In Accountability.Readme the crackling behind the figure, these black lines, are thunderbolt moments in the sky. Those are just leftover pixels from deleted images. It is quite a literal process, but sometimes I work against that, oversizing my work and forcing the machine to crop it. The remnants are cool.

 

LW Does it have personal relevance for you, working digitally?

 

QW My first experience with drawing was on a computer. My mom used to hate to watch me draw or colour. She always said, “You don’t draw within the lines!”. On Microsoft Paint, I used a limited colour palette, which is the colour palette I stick to now. Drawing on the computer was never permanent. Now, when I make tufting drawings, it’s the same thing. I still use my mouse and not a stylus. I freehand the tuftings onto their frames, but recently I have been projecting to have more accuracy. I operate my drawings from a more naive standpoint – the tuftings are parts of my childhood, lingering memories of my youth. I don’t need them to be the most highly-rendered, overshot image we’ve ever seen. It requires balance. The digital-to-physical relationship is very inspiring to me. The screen is the most important part of our lives – moving it into a physical space is fascinating.

 

LW  You mentioned that your tuftings spring from elements of your childhood. There is one work, Time Out, with a figure surrounded by mirrors facing a corner. What is the story there?

 

QW  My parents tried to explain a lot of things to me. I didn’t get put in timeout too often, but I fear being alone, which comes from my childhood. Time Out depicts a time I visited my aunt’s house, and she had so many mirrors all in one room, like a fun house. That was the first time I became aware of being a person. That was the first time I focused upon my reflection – a self-actualizing moment. Now, my images are everywhere.

 

LW How does it feel to centre yourself in these works, and to have the art world’s gallerists and buyers contemplating your image?

 

QW It is a very overwhelming feeling. At first, it was powerful to be in a position of adoration. But it can be the weirdest experience: when people critiqued the work, they critiqued your image. With the side eye effect, I felt like the Mona Lisa. When The [Black] Madonna Whore Complex got bought by the MET, everything just blew up. Even at the Studio Museum in Harlem, I struggled with the desire to be seen. I wanted to focus on rebuilding a relationship with myself. That is where these newer works come from – a narrative is always being pushed with my image. Now, I control my image. I am protective of it and of others’ intentions with it.