Qualeasha Wood Weaves the Online Into the IRL

Qualeasha Wood's exhibition code_anima, on view at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Culture in Charlotte until September 22, presents her most intimate performance of self to date, exploring the digital and linguistic codes she navigates online. Curated by Leandra-Juliet Kelley as part of the Gantt Center's 50th-anniversary program, the show includes jacquard-woven, tufted and resin diamond-studded works. The centerpiece, "I Still Need That (40 acres)," is a nearly 16-foot weaving depicting fictional terms and conditions for accessing Blackness online, made illegible on purpose. "Linguistics," composed largely of memes Wood saved from Twitter, is described as reading like a visualization of Legacy Russell's argument in Black Meme (2024).