hen New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art came knocking, Qualeasha Wood almost said no. It was mid-2021, and the young Philadelphia-based textile artist and photographer was experiencing one of the biggest waves of attention in her career to date:, a large tapestry inspired in equal measure by Freud and Kanye, had recently graced the cover of an Art in America issue edited by esteemed young curator Antwaun Sargent.
Eventually, Wood reneged – “My mom and my gallerist were like, ‘Just give the Met the piece.’” But her initial refusal speaks a lot to the way Wood moves through the world. Throughout our conversation, the 26-year-old – dressed in a Super Bowl T-shirt and denim jacket, her head recently shaved, looking far more casual than the glamorous, gown-wearing priestess she depicts herself as in her art – describes herself as “bold”, “brash” and “liking a challenge”.
“I developed that attitude before I even started selling work, which is a little backwards,” she says. “I was noticing in undergrad that Black artists and artists of colour are expected to package up some kind of trauma, and that makes me feel icky. I was like, ‘If I’m gonna have to be subjected to the system, how do I feel OK with that?’ Now, I think: if I would be ashamed if someone knew, then it’s money I don’t need to take.
Growing up in Long Branch, New Jersey, a town that “didn’t value art at all”, Wood didn’t even think a career in culture was possible. Going to galleries and museums, she noticed: “If I saw a Black artist, it was more than likely they were dead – and most likely a depiction of a slave in a painting, or art that was stolen from African countries.
It was at RISD that Wood began making tapestries, inspired by the photo-printed blankets her grandmother had. Before she began at the college, she was already a “social media diva”, running Facebook groups and posting prolifically on Instagram. Once there she took charge of her class’s social media forums and used her platform to “talk a lot of shit”.