Qualeasha Wood biography

 

Qualeasha Wood is a textile artist whose work contemplates realities around black female embodiment that do and might exist. Inspired by a familial relationship to textiles, queer craft, Microsoft Paint and internet avatars Wood's tufted and tapestry pieces mesh traditional craft and contemporary technological materials. Together, Qualeasha navigates both an Internet environment saturated in Black Femme figures and culture, and a political and economic environment holding that embodiment at the margins. Like the vast majority of her age-peers, Wood has operated one mortal and multiple digital avatars since pre-adolescence. For her what are intuitive combinations of analog and cybernetic compositional processes make for a plainly contemporary exploration of Black American Femme ontology.

She earned her BFA in Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design (2019), followed by a MFA in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Fine Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (2021). Qualeasha was born in Long Branch, Jersey but is currently based in Brooklyn, New York.

Qualeasha has exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY); Hauser and Wirth (New York, NY); Art Basel Miami Beach with Kendra Jayne Patrick (New York, NY); Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, (London, UK); CANADA gallery (New York, NY); the Trout Museum of Art (Appleton, WI); NADA Miami Beach 2020 with Kendra Jayne Patrick (Miami, FL); Kendra Jayne Patrick for Metro Pictures (New York, NY); Cooper Cole (Toronto, ON); New Image Art (Los Angeles, CA); Gaa Gallery (Provincetown, MA). She is currently represented by Gallery Kendra Jayne Patrick. Recently her work landed on the front cover of Art in America, the New Talent issue of May 2021 (guest edited by Antwaun Sargent).

Image: ill Na Na’s Revenge (in progress), beaded tapestry, 2022. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.