Memories of Qilin is inspired by traditional East Asian art. It channels the sense of movement and fluidity found in classical Chinese brushwork, while drawing from the colors, patterns, and forms of ukiyo-e woodblock prints. 

The series explores elements of folklore, evoking the mythological imagery of dragons, phoenixes, flowers, and mountains.  The title references a fabled chimerical beast found throughout East Asian mythology (while the qilin is its Chinese name, it is also known in Korea as the girin and Japan as the kirin) that represents prosperity and luck.

Viewers are invited to interpret elusive forms that verge on representation. As with the stories passed on through generations, each piece is imagined, organic, and ever-in-flux.

Memories of Qilin #877

Emily Xie

Unlike Xie's typical code-based work, "Away from Keyboard" is a physical piece: a hand-cut and pasted collage inspired by her own algorithms. Each piece of paper used is printed with one of her generative patterns. Through this manual creation process, Xie gets to explore and understand her generative systems in a different light.

Away from Keyboard

Memories of Qilin #499

Guardian Lion is a piece that combines generative AI, algorithmic textures, and free-hand drawing with digital collage.


Xie investigates how traditional emblems can be reimagined within modern narratives. Her depiction of a single guardian lion, typically found pairs, symbolizes the dynamics of change, growth, and the solitude of immigration. The intensive collage process furthermore reflects Xie's personal journey: fragments of past and present, reinterpreted and woven together to form a new hybrid cultural identity.

Guardian Lion #24/30

Interwoven #30

*Off Script* is a generative system that explores sensoriality through the subject of collage. At its core, the series uses a custom masking algorithm to cut out shapes from algorithmically produced papers, which are then arranged throughout the canvas. It is programmed in Javascript.

Much like the practice of collage itself, *Off Script* elicits a deeply sensorial experience. Generative textures induce a sense of tactility, while askew jagged shapes evoke the punctuated off-beat sounds of jazz. With its synesthetic qualities, the series challenges its own medium, creating a dialogue between the immateriality of digital representation and the corporality of the physical realm. 

*Off Script*'s visual language references various 20th century modern art movements that similarly emphasized medium and material through distilled expressions of shape, color, and composition.

Off Script #17

"Crescent Blue" is a mixed digital media piece featuring evocative, curved forms that oscillate between the abstract and figurative. The piece further evokes tension with lush blue textures contrasted against stark white cutouts. 

In this work, Xie combines principles from traditional art forms with contemporary digital techniques, using digital collage, freehand drawn elements, algorithmically produced paper textures, along with techniques of AI to guide an underlying composition.

For Digital Art Fair Asia 2023, presented by Phillips Auction House.

Artist: Emily Xie  

Medium: Digital Collage, Generative Papers w/ Javascript, Computational Methods

Dimensions: 7200 x 4800 pixels

Year: 2023

Crescent Blue

Memories of Qilin #808

"Aphelion Skies" presents a seemingly paradoxical scene, portraying a night sky juxtaposed with visuals of daylight. The artwork’s imagery, both surreal and ethereal, highlights the transient nature of time and light. Sweeping lines evoke a sense of movement and fluidity––almost reminiscent of a deluge––while simultaneously hinting at the freedom of flight. 

Xie's innovative use of digital techniques invites viewers to explore the boundaries between reality and imagination, day and night, stillness and motion. 

Artist: Emily Xie

Medium: digital collage, algorithmic techniques and textures with Javascript, and generative AI assets for compositional structure.

Year: 2024

Aphelion Skies

Spiral Forms combines digital collage, generative AI, along with algorithmically-generated textures and techniques to evoke a dynamic, sweeping visual––echoing the forms of an unfurling dragon while remaining abstract.

Exhibited with HOFA for the "New Beginnings" exhibition in partnership with Fellowship AI.

Spiral Forms

Artworks by Emily Xie

Memories of Qilin #683

Memories of Qilin by Emily Xie

Off Script #43

Off Script

Interwoven #90

*Interwoven* is a long-form generative art series created by Emily Xie as Vol. 4 of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Remembrance of Things Future blockchain initiative. The project is a collaboration with Cactoid Labs in support of LACMA’s Art and Technology Lab. 

Made entirely with code, *Interwoven* draws inspiration from the 1986 Bullseye Quilt by Martha Lou Jones in LACMA’s collection, meditating on the quilt’s underlying tension between the computational and handmade through a distinctive patchwork style. The algorithm uses randomness to give rise to creature-like forms in order to embody the narrative elements so integral to the tradition of quilt-making.

Interwoven by Emily Xie

Guardian Lion #20/30

Guardian Lion by Emily Xie

*Material Histories* is a series of unique works that embody artist Emily Xie’s focus on texture and abstracted mythological motifs, bringing them together for the first time with tactile, handmade embroidery. 

The series unites computational artistry and textile-based artisanship – two fields that have been historically intertwined, and whose intersections are a consistent theme within Xie’s work. The contrast between her digital processes and this tangible media accentuate the cultural tension found between the virtual and the material, while proving that they can complement each other in powerful ways. 

Each piece in this series represents one of the six elements between eastern and western cultures: earth, wood, metal, fire, water, and air. This distillation of nature into form is uniquely evocative of ancient stories around the elements, bringing a sense of strength and lore to each artwork fed from Emily Xie’s native abstraction. 

*Material Histories* series exercises the timeless practice of imbuing the natural elements with the character of myth, and the works are ultimately stitched into fabric the same way as some of the earliest creations in human history. The process for this series starts with a computer algorithm written by the artist to evoke fluid, multi-textural organic forms. Outputs from this generative code are then fed into an artificial intelligence model to produce thousands of images, from which Xie collages fragments, molding and distilling them to create hybrid digital-born images. Lastly, these digital works are closely translated by woven artisans over the course of eight months into a limited set of hand embroidered canvas artworks, each stretched and floated within exquisite hand joined black-stained oak frames.

The artworks of *Material Histories* are the first by Emily Xie that venture into bespoke physical materials, using the historical techniques and vernacular of Asian textiles that have inspired her work for years, and giving each piece the calm but powerful personality of an elemental force of nature.

—

*Material Histories* \
2024

Hand embroidered stretched canvas, 48 x 36 in. (#1-2) or 20 x 15 in. (#3-6) with solid handmade oak wood float frame, signed on verso.

Each token represents the ownership over the unique, original framed embroidered canvas, to be claimed by the token holder, with shipping at additional cost. Upon resale on the secondary market, the original shall be shipped to the new owner. The receiver of the work will cover shipping costs.

Material Histories: Ore

Material Histories: Water

Material Histories by Emily Xie

An abstract blue form rises against parchment-like backdrop. Its contours are fractured by pixelated panels and glitched smears, while floral motifs and pale cyan nest within the shapes, recalling traditional print techniques. The image sets organic motifs and digital artifacts side by side to probe the boundary between craft and code, past and present.

Medium: Digital collage, algorithmic textures w/ Javascript, generative AI for compositional assets

Static Trace by Emily Xie #14/100

Static Trace by Emily Xie #43/100

STATIC TRACE

Starting August 14 at 12:00 pm EST.

A curated three-piece set of my work will be released through a charity auction in support of 
Museum of Art + Light, via Iconic and AOTM. Auction runs for 48 hours.

The set presents the different ways I have explored collage in my practice: two digital pieces with their corresponding prints, *Aphelion Skies* and *Off Script #53*, along with a test print hand-finished with gold foil that has never been released before (created through Avant Arte).

Three Artworks

Excited to release COMBAT MODE on base tomorrow with Highlight_xyz for

🔆 OᑎᑕᕼᗩIᑎ ᔑᑌᗰᗰEᖇ 🔆

Wednesday at 12pm ET 

Stay tuned for special perks ✯ signed merch ✯ special prizes 🫶

COMBAT MODE

PNG, made with Javascript with p5.js and shaders

3400 x 3000 pixels

Executed in 2023 and minted on 29 March 2023. This work is unique and accompanied by a non-fungible token.

Thread Effects in Blue draws inspiration from traditional quilting patterns. Xie's piece investigates how one may use computation to both create (through its generative medium) and destroy (through glitch effects). Striking a balance between the high-tech and the handmade, as well as the chaotic and the ordered, Thread Effects in Blue invites the viewer to contemplate the ways in which technology and tradition intersect and collide in our rapidly changing world.

Emily Xie (emily-xie)

Emily Xie (emily-xie)

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