Emily Xie

Emily Xie is a generative artist whose work often combines digital collage and AI-synthesized elements with drawings and textures that are handmade (or handmade-like). A former software engineer, she was an artist in residence at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. Her work has been exhibited internationally at the Singapore ArtScience Museum, Kunsthalle Zürich, Unit London, and Times Square, New York.

Artworks

Material Histories

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.

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.

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Guardian Lion

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 digital collage process furthermore reflects Xie's personal journey: fragments of past and present, reinterpreted and woven together to form a new hybrid cultural identity.

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COMBAT MODE

"COMBAT MODE" is inspired by retro video game posters. It depicts two creatures in battle, melding the nostalgia of old school video games with the contemporary possibilities of digital illustration.

Influenced by Xie's lifelong love for video games, the series combines digital collage, algorithmic design and techniques, along with generative AI. The same underlying image comes in 10 different palettes with varying probabilities of appearing, ranging from highly common to ultra rare. Each piece comes stamped with its corresponding transaction hash for a sense of provenance and a touch of uniqueness.

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Interwoven

Interwoven is part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Remembrance of Things Future initiative, where artists make new digital work inspired by the museum’s holdings.

Drawing from Martha Lou Jones’s 1896 ‘Bullseye’ quilt and Emily Xie’s past work with patchwork shapes and simulated textiles, the series underscores the balance of computation and organic creation in both quilting and generative art. Drawing from Martha Lou Jones’s 1896 ‘Bullseye’ quilt and Emily Xie’s past work with patchwork shapes and simulated textiles, the series underscores the balance of computation and organic creation in both quilting and generative art.

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Memories of Qilin

Memories of Qilin is a generative art collection inspired by East Asian art, particularly Ukiyo-e woodblock patterns and dynamic Chinese brushwork.

Viewers are invited to interpret its organic forms through the lens of folklore—though the imagery equally evokes the 20th-century abstract paintings of Joan Miró and Gustav Klimt. This is an Art Blocks Curated release. Viewers are invited to interpret its organic forms through the lens of folklore—though the imagery equally evokes the 20th-century abstract paintings of Joan Miró and Gustav Klimt. This is an Art Blocks Curated release.

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Off Script

Off Script is a generative art series inspired by early 20th-century modernist art and collage while bearing, in its offbeat shapes, some spiritual influence from jazz music.

The textures of its algorithmically produced papers and seemingly hand-cut shapes are notably tactile, a hallmark of Emily Xie’s on-chain work. The collection was minted in person at Bright Moments London.

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Away From Keyboard

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.

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Concentric Drawing

A generative piece inspired by Herbert W. Franke's work with algebraic line drawings.

This work was produced as part of the Tribute to Herbert W. Franke, to honor Franke's life and many contributions to the field of generative art.

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Spiral Forms

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.

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Flowers in Bloom

In Flowers in Bloom, Xie's code brings to life an image that is human and organic.

With its hand-made and tactile aesthetic, this piece challenges the cold roboticism of its own medium. Its subject matter further underscores this dialogue: flowers represent human emotion and experience––gifted in times of passion, grief, and ceremony. Initially released as part of the "In Our Code" group show at Unit London.

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Browse more of Emily Xie's artwork here.