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 at once: the interplays between chance versus control, the organic versus the systematic, the traditional versus the modern, and the abstract versus the representational. Her algorithms question the relationship between human touch and computational processes, and incorporates elements of skeuomorphism to challenge perceptions of materiality. In particular, Xie often emphasizes the intersection of computation and textile arts, 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 the United Nations Headquarters, Singapore ArtScience Museum, Kunsthalle Zürich, Unit London, the Armory Show, Bright Moments, Times Square, 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

Phillips London. PhillipsX and HOFA: Digital Innovation Meets Contemporary Art. London, UK. 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

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

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

Superrare Curation. Curated Conversations. 2023

Right Click Save. Proof of Pixels. 2023

Outland Art. Creative Inputs. 2022

Bright Moments Quarterly. Off Script. 2022

White Hot Magazine. Art & NFTs at Consensus. 2022

Tensorflow Community Front Page. Bringing the Mona Lisa Effect to Life with Tensorflow.js. 2020

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

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

Bright Moments, London. Pre-Mint Panel. London, UK. 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