Emily Xie is a visual artist living in NYC. She works with code and computation to create lifelike textures and forms. She draws inspiration from physical media such as textiles, collage, and wallpaper, and examines them within a technological context. Her digital work explores how diverse materials and patterns intermix to create cohesive visuals infused with themes of mythology, memory, tradition, and heritage.
Xie's generative systems often navigate many delicate balances: the interplays between chance versus control, the organic versus the systematic, the traditional versus the modern, and the abstract versus the representational. Her algorithms highlight the interplay between the human touch and computational processes, incorporating skeuomorphism to challenge material perceptions. In particular, Xie emphasizes the intersection of computation and textile arts, often referencing the historical and sensory richness of fabrics and mixed media.
Xie's creative coding work is collected and shown internationally. Recently, she has exhibited at Untitled Art Fair, the United Nations Headquarters, Singapore ArtScience Museum, Kunsthalle Zürich, Unit London, the Armory Show, Bright Moments, the StandardVision Artist Showcase throughout the city of Los Angeles.
Prior to pursuing art full-time, Emily built a career as a software engineer while exploring and teaching herself creative coding on the side. She worked within various programming domains including devtooling, visualization, and machine learning.
Artist CV
PHYSICAL EXHIBITIONS & SHOWS
Untitled Art Fair. Material Histories. Presented by TENDER. Miami, FL. 2024
Museum of Art and Light. Code & Canvas. Manhattan, KS. 2024 - 2025
ART021 Shanghai. Shanghai, CN. 2024
Phillips London. PhillipsX and HOFA: Digital Innovation Meets Contemporary Art. London, UK. 2024
Art Crush Gallery. Artworks displayed on 1000 public billboards throughout Belgium. 2024
United Nations Headquarters. Doves in Flight on display at Visitor's Center. New York, NY. 2024
Lume Studios. SuperRare x CoCollectors. New York, NY. 2024
Bright Moments Venice. Finale Collection. Venice, Italy. 2024
HOFA Gallery. New Beginnings. London, UK. 2024
Sotheby's. Contemporary Curated. New York, NY. 2024
Phillips Auction House Galleries. Digital Art Fair x Phillips. Kowloon, Hong Kong. 2023
Every 30 Days (solo, Memories of Qilin). Glitch Gallery. Marfa, TX. 2023
Source. Feral File. Curated by Casey Reas, Operator, 0xDeafbeef. 2023
Notes from the Ether. Curated by Clara Peh and Deborah Lim. Singapore ArtScience Museum. Singapore, SG. 2023
Future Frequencies: Explorations in Generative Art. Curated by Sebastian Sanchez. Christie's. New York, NY. 2023
A Digital Transcendence. Curated by Paloma Rodriguez. Pier 17. New York, NY. 2023
An Invitation to Generative Art. Glitch Gallery. Marfa, TX. 2023
Reaching for the Future. Ultra Supernew Gallery. Tokyo, JP. 2023
Proof Curated: Evolving Pixels (role: curator). Venus Over Manhattan. New York, NY. 2023
The Medici Collection by Cozomo de' Medici in Times Square. Times Square Billboards. New York, NY. 2023
On Water. Pier17 NY. New York, NY. 2023
Remembrance of Things Future. LACMA Stark Bar Outdoor Screens. Los Angeles, CA. 2023
Gen XX. Seattle NFT Museum. Seattle, WA. 2023
Proof of Concept. Presented by Co-Museum, Singapore Art Week. Curated by Clara. Singapore. 2023
FEMGEN, Miami Art Week. Presented by VerticalCrypto and RightClickSave. Miami, FL. 2022
perceive(), Marfa Gallery. Curated by 0xTechno, PlutoniumF, Proper. Marfa, TX. 2022
Herbert Franke Tribute. Charitable showcase in honor of Franke's life & work. 2022
Kunsthalle Zurich, DYOR. Curated by Nina Roehrs. Zurich, CH. 2022
Unit London, In Our Code (Flowers in Bloom). Curated by AOI. London, UK. 2022
Standard Vision x Vellum. Showcase throughout city of Los Angelos, CA. 2022
The Armory Show. Assemblage. Exhibited by Cortesi Gallery. New York, NY. 2022
Bright Moments, London Collection. Off Script (solo). London, UK. 2022
Times Square. Showcase by Curated XYZ. New York, NY. 2022
EXPO Art Week Chicago. Art After Hours. Chicago, IL. 2022
Artsy x Vellum. Artists Who Code. 2022
NFT Art Week. Curated by Neal Digital Gallery. Shenzhen, China. 2021
New York Fashion Week. Installation for Sundae School show. New York, NY. 2019
FEATURES &
PRESS MENTIONS
Forbes. Museum of Art and Light Opening in Kansas with an Industry-Leading Focus on Digital Art. 2024
Business Insider. SPACES: Digital Innovation Meets Contemporary Art at Phillips. 2024
Design Boom. Design Boom's Guide to London Frieze Art Week. 2024
Le Random. Emily Xie on Textile as Personal Canvas. 2024
Avant Arte. Emily Xie: Plastic Code. 2024
Taschen. ON NFTs. Essays: On Memories of Qilin by Tyler Hobbs and On Off Script by Emily Xie. 2024
Cultured Magazine. Supermodel Karlie Kloss Shows Off Her Curatorial Chops at Sotheby’s Auction During Women’s History Month. 2024
Superrare Curation. Curated Conversations. 2023
Artnet News. Generative Artist Emily Xie Has Created a Series of 100 NFTs Based on a 100-Year-Old Quilt in LACMA’s Collection. 2023
LACMA Unframed. Remembrance of Things Future: A Conversation with Emily Xie. 2023
Vogue Business. New Gucci NFTs Combine Fashion and Art Using Generative AI. 2023
Right Click Save. Proof of Pixels. 2023
Monty Report. The Curiousity and Ambition of Emily Xie. 2023
Coin Telegraph. Creating 'organic' Generative Art from Robotic Algorithms: Emily Xie, NFT Creator. 2023
Artnet News. LACMA Is Inviting Digital Artists to Put Tech-Powered Spins on Works in Its Collection as Part of a New Blockchain Initiative. 2023
Bloomberg. PROOF Co-Founder and CEO on Expansion, Future of NFTs? 2022
Artnet News. Which Artists Should You Be Watching? 2022
Cryptobriefing. 2022 In Review: Top Five NFT Drops of the Year. 2022
Coindesk. Generative Art NFTs Bring New Heat to Crypto Winter. 2022
Outland Art. Creative Inputs. 2022
Bright Moments Quarterly. Off Script. 2022
Clot Magazine. S1E3: ‘In Our Code’, a collaboration between humans and machines in the language of code. 2022
Proof Podcast. Financialization of Culture, #Block-Talk, and Unboxing a Damien Hirst Physical. 2022
Pace Gallery Journal. Generative Art, Minimalism and New Frontiers in System-Based Practices. 2022
White Hot Magazine. Art & NFTs at Consensus. 2022
Hacker News Front Page. Bringing the Mona Lisa Effect to Life with Tensorflow.js. 2020
Tensorflow Community Front Page. Bringing the Mona Lisa Effect to Life with Tensorflow.js. 2020
Faces of Open Source. Featured as part of photo project documenting people behind the open source revolution. 2019
RESIDENCIES,
AWARDS & GRANTS
2024 Lumen Prize Finalist
Still Image Award Finalists: Memories of Qilin & Interwoven
Pioneer Works. Artist-in-Residence, Technology Department
Spent time further exploring generative art in self-directed environment. Red Hook, NY. 2016
Recurse Center, NYC
Received grant for programmer's sabbatical at the Recurse Center to work on personal coding projects. Explored generative art and submitted a small patch for a Git bug. New York, NY. 2016
EDUCATION
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Masters (SM) in Computational Science and Engineering. Coursework focused on machine learning and visual computing. Cambridge, MA. 2019 - 2020.
Harvard College
Bachelors (AB) in History of Art and Architecture. Cambridge, MA. 2008 - 2012.
SPEAKING
AGI House. Presentation on algorithms and AI as art practice. San Francisco, SF. 2024
UN Headquarters. UN Trailblazer Award Ceremony: Artist Speech on Commissioned Piece, Doves in Flight. New York, NY. 2024
PWW3, Edition 3. Panel: Art and Institutions. New York, NY. 2024
Station3 x Sotheby's. Generative Art Panel. New York, NY. 2024
Asian American Arts Alliance. Panel: Generative Artists on Creativity, Algorithms, and AI. New York, NY. 2024
Sotheby's. Panel: The Rise of Long-Form Generative Art. New York, NY. 2023
AOI Streams. #08 In Our Code: The Machine as an Extension of the Soul with Generative Artists Emily Xie, Tyler Hobbs, and Casey Reas. 2022
Bright Moments, London. Pre-Mint Panel. London, UK. 2022
Unit-On-Chain. S1E3: Creativity and Randomness in Generative Art. 2022
Bright Moments Panel. NFT NYC. 2022
NYC Salon. Private event - NFT NYC Edition. 2021
OSCON. Making art with p5js. Portland, OR. 2019
PYCON. Making art with Python. Cleveland, OH. 2018
Strangeloop. Making art with code in p5.js. St. Louis, MO. 2017
Coding Train. Guest Tutorial #4: Matrix Digital Rain in p5.js. 200,000+ views. 2017
Code as Craft: Etsy Engineering Series. Journey into Creative Coding. Brooklyn, NY. 2016
CodeConf. Git internals workshop. 2016
Git Merge. Dissecting Git's Guts. New York, NY. 2016
OPEN SOURCE CONTRIBUTIONS
Git Source Code
Corrected misfeature for empty string as pathspecs. Commits: d426430e and 9e4e8a64. 2016 - 2017
p5.js
Coded the homepage feature sketch for the month of summer 2016. Commit: f9fb275. Contributed as an educator: taught various classes on making art with p5.js.
Ace Editor
Fixed text-rendering error.
OTHER WORK AND PROJECTS
Combine24, Shortlist Committee Member
Finnish National Gallery. 2024
Professional Software Engineer
Various Tech Companies. 2014 - 2022