Emily Xie

Emily Xie makes generative art in New York, coding mostly in JavaScript with p5.js. The patterns and textures in her images come from the code itself, and the results often look like paper collage, quilting or woodblock printing. Myth and folklore are recurring subjects.

Xie studied art history at Harvard and later earned a master's there in computational science and engineering. Daniel Shiffman's Coding Train videos got her started with generative art around 2015, while she was working as a software engineer. In 2016 she took a programmer's sabbatical at the Recurse Center and a residency at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. Her first NFT series, Morphology, came out on EthBlock.art in 2021.

Memories of Qilin came out on Art Blocks Curated in March 2022. Its 1,024 works draw on ukiyo-e prints, Chinese brushwork and the qilin, a mythical beast of good fortune. In 2022 she also left engineering to make art full time, and released Off Script, 100 code-made collages, with Bright Moments in London. Interwoven (2023), with LACMA and Cactoid Labs, is 100 works inspired by Martha Lou Jones's 1896 Bullseye quilt in the museum's collection. Later work adds generative AI, hand drawing and craft. Guardian Lion (2024), with Avant Arte, mixes code with free-hand drawing, and Material Histories (2024) is embroidered by hand from AI-assisted designs.

Institutional shows include DYOR at Kunsthalle Zürich (2022), Notes from the Ether at Singapore's ArtScience Museum (2023) and Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms at the Toledo Museum of Art (2025). Memories of Qilin was a 2024 Lumen Prize finalist, and the Museum of Art + Light in Manhattan, Kansas, holds Memories of Qilin #453. In 2025 she was Digital Artist in Residence at the Toledo Museum of Art and began working in glass there.