Qualeasha Wood - The [Black] Madonna/Whore Complex, 2021
Jacquard-woven cotton, glass beads, 71 × 54 × 1/2 in. (180.3 × 137.2 × 1.3 cm)
In 2021, at 25, Qualeasha Wood became one of the youngest artists to have work acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art when her tapestry The [Black] Madonna/Whore Complex (2021) entered the collection. With its mashup of eras of imagery, the tapestry presents Wood as a Virgin Mary of the internet age, with the stigmata on her palms and a Sacred Heart in her grasp. Internet pop-up boxes for a “young hot ebony” float like clouds around her.
In a brash mashup of Catholic iconography and webcam voyeurism, Qualeasha Wood has woven an online avatar that offers one-click salvation. Bearing stigmata and a Sacred Heart, this "young hot ebony" presides over access to the camera responsible for the glitchy, screenshot selfies behind her.
By presenting herself as both holy icon and object of desire, Wood rejects the racist, sexist stereotype that views Black women solely as promiscuous commodities; she accomplishes this move by enshrining and controlling her own image. Beyond the haloed portrait, which reads as both religious tondo and gilt mirror, Wood can be seen snapping selfies and selecting thumbnails: "If I’m going to get fetishized out here," she says, "I’m going to fetishize myself." For Wood, self-reference is self-reverence. - artnews
very nice
Awesome! 👏🏼