London may be battered by the effects of Brexit, Boris and buy-to-let landlords, but its emerging art scene remains resilient (anxieties of a mass migration to Margate remain, for now, just that). To spotlight the efforts of the gallerists and creatives who keep the city cutting-edge, we have chosen four of the best exhibitions taking place during London Gallery Weekend that feature artists in the first stage of their careers. With a broad age range and working across a variety of mediums and styles, the only common factor between these artists is that none have had a major institutional solo show—yet. [...]
Qualeasha Wood: TL;DR,
Pippy Houldsworth, 6 Heddon St W1B 4BT, until 4 June
Brooklyn-based Qualeasha Wood’s tapestries merge the IRL with the URL: iOS emojis and Microsoft Windows pop-ups are overlayed with self portraits, in a crowded and assemblage-like style, so as to resemble a Myspace profile. All this is rendered in the decidedly analogue and traditional technique of jacquard weaving.
Wood uses these works to articulate her experience as a Black woman of navigating the modern digital realm, where the hyper-consumption of Black culture circulates alongside the trauma porn of modern day lynchings. As she says: “Practicing safety online as a Black woman refers to the practice of protecting your time, your energy, your resources, your intellect and your image—the extension of your physical body—from racism, sexism, abuse, manipulation or theft.”
By creating tapestries bearing her digital avatar, Wood reworks the online in to her own language and places it under her ownership. To do so, she says, is to turn “the gaze back to the voyeur” and create a space that “actively dismisses the white gaze/supremacy”—one in which “whiteness becomes an ‘other’”.
