Artist Qualeasha Wooden delves into the world of glitches

What’s a glitch? The consequence of an unstable system, glitches expose a vulnerability to threats, however additionally they open up the opportunity of change. It’s a duality that fascinates the Philadelphia-based artist Qualeasha Wooden, who jumps into the black gap of web malfunctions in a brand new exhibition, ‘Malware’, at London’s Pippy Houldsworth Gallery.

In a collection of tapestries, tuftings and movies, Wooden marries up to date digital tradition with conventional crafts. In her fingers, a digital pixel turns into a single sew. In video works, she creates glitches by compressing textual content file knowledge. ‘On this quest for one thing actual, we produce quite a lot of faux photographs,’ says Wooden. ‘For me, one thing that feels most pure is one thing that’s decomposing, that’s not excellent or hiding something. It’s about bringing all these issues to the forefront.’

In addition to embodying the bodily glitch, Wooden pulls again the curtain on internet platforms themselves, introducing strings of code throughout her photographs. ‘Working with coding, and with datamoshing [a video technique with a purposely glitchy effect] particularly, has allowed the works to open up somewhat extra, and so they change into much less about my bodily physique and its look and extra about what it’s doing in an area.’

By inserting herself into the picture, Wooden considers the disruption executed to established programs by means of ‘glitches’, whether or not from a virus or by the Black feminine physique. The physique is ripe for each exploitation and resistance, thought of significantly in her webcam self-portraits.