What is a glitch? The consequence of an unstable system, glitches expose a vulnerability to threats, but they also open up the possibility of change. It’s a duality that fascinates the Philadelphia-based artist Qualeasha Wood, who jumps into the black hole of internet malfunctions in a new exhibition, ‘Malware’, at London’s Pippy Houldsworth Gallery.
In a series of tapestries, tuftings and videos, Wood marries contemporary digital culture with traditional crafts. In her hands, a digital pixel becomes a single stitch. In video works, she creates glitches by compressing text file data. ‘In this quest for something real, we produce a lot of fake images,’ says Wood. ‘For me, something that feels most natural is something that is decomposing, that’s not perfect or hiding anything. It’s about bringing all those things to the forefront.’
As well as embodying the physical glitch, Wood pulls back the curtain on web platforms themselves, introducing strings of code across her images. ‘Working with coding, and with datamoshing [a video technique with a purposely glitchy effect] in particular, has allowed the works to open up a little more, and they become less about my physical body and its appearance and more about what it’s doing in a space.’
(but i live in a hologram with you), 2025, by Qualeasha Wood
(Image credit: Courtesy the artist and Pippy Houldsworth Gallery London)
By inserting herself into the image, Wood considers the disruption done to established systems through ‘glitches’, whether from a virus or by the Black female body. The body is ripe for both exploitation and resistance, considered particularly in her webcam self-portraits.
‘I believe social media is akin to a cult or religion, and a lot of my early work was heavily influenced by religion for this reason’
