By Rosa Cartagena
Philadelphia textile artist Qualeasha Wood was at the Cheesecake Factory, hiding away from her booth at Miami’s famed Art Basel in 2021, when her phone began buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. She didn’t pay much attention; she was with family and had skipped the event for the day. At art fairs, Wood prefers to be incognito and eavesdrop on viewers’ honest reactions (from haters, especially) but she couldn’t pull it off in the Basel crowd. Finally, she picked up the call from her gallerist: Celebrity art collector Swizz Beatz loved one of her large woven jacquard tapestries and wanted it for his and his wife Alicia Keys’ star-studded collection.
The elusive artist couldn’t stay in the shadows much longer — and today, she’s very much in the spotlight. Three years after that purchase, Genesis (2021) has landed a spot in “Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys,” the first major exhibit of the couple’s holdings, running at New York’s Brooklyn Museum through July 7. The tapestry is a mesmerizing self-portrait of Wood in a red dress, encircled by a gold halo, crucified among the clouds and surrounded by her webcam selfies. At 27, Wood shares display space with Gordon Parks, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Amy Sherald, and other major historical and contemporary Black artists — people she read about in high school. “I never would’ve imagined we’d all be in the same room,” she said.
Wood grew up in Long Branch, N.J. and moved to Callowhill last year. Her elaborate and frenzied fabrics — desktop landscapes of emojis, cursors, and screenshots — have continued to gain traction, acquired by museums across the country, including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she’s one of the youngest artists in the collection.
“She is celebrating herself, but also critiquing society [and asking,] ‘Is the internet our new religion?’” said Kimberli Gant, the “Giants” curator. “She’s having these conversations within a tapestry, it’s not using the same technology to critique that technology — it’s unexpected.”
Chronically online, Wood has a love/hate relationship with social media that has fueled her curiosity about language, surveillance, worship, and, crucially, herself. It’s where she’s learned about her own body dysmorphia and expressed her struggles with mental health. The internet is Wood’s muse, a source of creative inspiration, self-reflection, and, in some cases, terror.
As a student at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2016, Wood and some friends infiltrated a Tomi Lahren fan page on Facebook and swapped the main photo for Michelle Obama. For that, she was doxxed by conservative trolls and received a barrage of racist and sexist harassment, including death and rape threats, making her afraid to leave her dorm. Wood emerged hardened, understanding that nothing in her life would be private — so she embraced it. She channeled that fear into her tapestries, spinning a defiant portrait with some of the hateful comments in works like Clout Chasin’ (2023). “It’s an example of the internet’s real-life impact,” she said. “People who don’t navigate the internet with any sort of fear or precaution just don’t think about these things happening.”
She had haters at RISD, too. In her first semester, a sculpture professor doubted her talent and told her she should drop out. The critique stunned, but didn’t deter her. Initially she studied illustration, thinking it could be more profitable as a career, but printmaking was her passion; a brief encounter with legendary quilter Faith Ringgold convinced her to pursue what she really wanted and Wood switched her major to printmaking. Later, inspired by her family’s knitting and crocheting hobbies, she began weaving tapestries interrogating the fetishization and objectification of Black women.
“My audience is by default white men and really rich white women. That’s not at all who I make work for, but I have to be aware of who’s in galleries,” said Wood. “I can’t make it easy for them. I have to create moments that disrupt their idea of safety, or ownership of a space.”
Putting “ebony” — the popular term for porn featuring Black women — on the prestigious walls of the Met was one way to accomplish that. Chat boxes in The [Black] Madonna/Whore Complex (2021) ask: “are you ready? young hot ebony is online” with a button to “enter salvation.” Wood is at the center of the glitching halo holding a sacred heart on fire, inviting and indicting.
While the display in the Met’s 2021-22 “Alter Egos | Projected Selves” exhibit was a career highlight, the experience reminded her why she hated museums as a kid. When talking to high schoolers about the work at the museum, Wood was repeatedly scolded for being too loud. The same thing happened when her family visited. The unspoken etiquette of silence brought forth a sharp dissonance: She was acceptable enough to be showcased, but still deemed a problem for being herself.
Continuing to push boundaries, Wood is on the cutting edge of craft arts, which fine art institutions have only recently embraced. Tufting, an intensive process of rug making, has skyrocketed in popularity in the last five years, thanks to Philly artists Tim Eads and Tiernan Alexander, who founded the teaching and supplies company Tuft the World. (It’s also a huge TikTok trend.) Wood began experimenting with the fluffy medium during pandemic lockdown and last year she was on the jury of Tuft the World’s TuftCon.
“Qualeasha is carving her own path, [taking] this 100-year-old craft and really doing something with it that has never been done before,” said Eads.
The tufted pieces move away from self-portraiture and emphasize the internet’s omnipresent surveillance using multiple large eyes that echo the eyes emoji. Wood says the “back-breaking” process is a challenge of endurance that takes dozens of hours, but it’s like therapy. In December, she collaborated with Tuft the World to make the special edition rug To Catch a Predator (2023): Eyes and hands surround a computer user overwhelmed by sleazy DMs.
Now that she moved her studio to Philly — after a stint splitting her time between here and New York — Wood has reintroduced herself in the local arts scene. A few years ago, she was abruptly uninvited from an exhibit because the Philly gallery (whose name she can’t remember) found her work inappropriate for children. “My feelings were so hurt. I was really excited because I don’t always get to show in places where everyone I care about can access,” said Wood, whose family lives near Cherry Hill, N.J. Wood has expanded into sculpture with furniture making, returning to the very medium she was once told she wasn’t talented enough for. She is currently working on upcoming Philly shows in “unexpected locations,” though she can’t share details yet. But wherever and whenever her work appears in Philly, Wood will be ready to welcome the haters and worshippers alike.
