Qualeasha Wood is an interdisciplinary artist whose work contemplates realities around Black Female embodiment, that do or might exist. Inspired by a familial relationship to textiles, queer craft, Microsoft Paint and internet avatars, Wood's video, tapestry and tufted pieces mesh traditional craft, performance and contemporary technological materials. Her own image acts as a point of departure for works that explore racial, sexual and gender identity as they relate to the Black femme body.

As a digital native, Wood considers relationships to voyeurism and idolatry through video and performances that deftly navigate an internet environment that is at once a space of celebration and recognition for Black femme figures, as well as a politically loaded site for the ongoing marginalization and exploitation of their selfhood and culture. Wood’s tapestries combine cybernetic and analogue processes; in her work, a pixel is equivalent to a stitch, each stitch an analogy for the past, present and future of Black femmehood, both on- and off-line, pre- and post-internet. While Wood’s tapestries blend images from social media with religious iconography, her tuftings represent cartoon-like figures that recall racist caricatures. In them, Wood adopts a naïve aesthetic that calls on the nostalgia of cartoon animations and their association with racial stereotyping to unpack notions of Black girlhood. For Qualeasha, what are intuitive combinations of analog and cybernetic compositional processes, make for a plainly contemporary exploration of Black American Femme ontology.

This event is supported by the Temple General Activities Fund and Tyler Fiber and Material Studies Department.