CURRICULUM VITAE
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System Maintenance, 2023
woven Jacquard, Glass Beads
56 x 82 inches 
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Dirt Off Your Shoulder - Jay Z, 2023
woven Jacquard, Glass Beads
56 x 80 inches


PRESS RELEASE
Qualeasha Wood’s latest investigations into digital Black womanhood lead her to the relationship between artificial intelligence and perceptions of the black femme self. AI-engineered face and body filters encoded into Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, et al are far more intensely transformative than their predecessors. Lead by a myth of neutrality - a myth the tech bros cum overlords tell themselves over and over about the character of the systems they develop - the digital tools that alter bodies on social media surreptitiously and instantaneously impose Eurocentric beauty ideals upon us in overbearing ways.


For women of color, long harried by the pressure to meet those standards, Wood proposes this leading to a new kind of dysmorphia. One wherein Eurocentric beauty standards don’t simply haunt one from the magazine cover or the movie theater or even the trashy celebrity TikTok account. Instead, these standards sit directly on your visage, showing you exactly how green eyes, a dainty nose, a higher cheek as applied to the specifics of your face make ideal beauty *just* within reach. These digital interventions symbolize a complex interaction of technology, identity, and sexual expectations.


She posits that the allure of these filters isn’t merely about beautification, but about finding belonging in a society that regards Black femme culture as a commodity. These instant image alterations can translate to feelings of inadequacy, triggering both depersonalization (a disconnection from one’s own identity) and body dysmorphia (a distorted view of one’s own appearance). Exacerbated by the racial biases of AI filters, these conditions carry deep psychological weight. Wood is thinking heavily about Afro-pessimism and the reduction of self to a casualty of white supremacy.


The broader effects of these systems are also prominent. Among women Qualeasha’s generation and younger, plastic surgery is out in the open, run of the mill, whereas women older than her whisper about it, hoping any work they’ve had done goes unnoticed. “Snapchat dysmorphia” is a term coined by plastic surgeons who have within the last few years noticed an uptick of patients who, instead of bringing in photos of their favorite celebrity whom they want to resemble, now present AI-filtered and AI-edited versions of themselves as aspirational imperatives.



Asl?, 2023 
tufted Wool and Acrylic 
31.25 x 28 inches


(the) Big Comfy Couch, 2023
tufted Wool and Acrylic
63 x 59.5 inches


1312 (cop car piece), 2023
tufted Wool and Acrylic
63 x 60.5 inches


Got My Eye On You, 2023
Tufted Wool and Acrylic
31.25 x 28 inches 


Swag Surfin, 2023
Woven Jacquard, Glass Beads
84 x 56 inches 


~Circumambient~ alt. Asunder, 2023
woven Jacquard, Glass Beads
80 x 56 inches

To Catch a Predator, 2023
tufted Wool and Acrylic
104 x 82.5 inches 

Screensaver, 2023
woven Jacquard, Glass Beads
82 x 56 inches


Peep Show, 2023
woven Jacquard, Glass Beads
56 x 80 inches 


Keyboard Warrior(The People´s Champs, 2023 
woven Jacquard, Glass Beads
60 x 160 inches