Anna Lucia’s Loom – released on Art Blocks Factory on December 10, 2021 – has stayed on my mind ever since I first saw it. The more I have explored the project, the more I enjoy it: not only for its captivating visuals, but for what it represents.

Loom #0

Loom was inspired by the textile artwork of female artists who were part of the Bauhaus school in Germany in the early twentieth century. As Anna Lucia detailed in a thread leading up the release of the project, these female artists created now-iconic patterns in their weaving projects, yet they weren’t even necessarily working in their choice of medium.

Loom exposes the absurdity of expectations about what "feminine" art should be like. In our own time – despite valiant efforts by organizations like Girls Who Code – programming still is too often not regarded as something women "do." By reclaiming a form of artistic expression deemed “appropriate” for the female artists at the Bauhaus by the patriarchy of the 1920s and reimagining it a hundred years later in another format dominated by men, Anna Lucia has created a wonderfully feminist work of art.

Though Loom successfully recreates physical weaving techniques, naturalism is not its end goal. Anna Lucia intentionally used no shading and no anti-aliasing (a process for smoothing hard edges), and the final images remain recognizably pixelated as a result.

Loom #54

While some iterations appear as digital representations of woven textiles, others resemble circuit boards. As viewers, we are meant to realize that these are no longer merely the soft, perfectly woven rugs we have come to associate with female Bauhaus artists.

Loom #79

Instead, Anna Lucia introduces faults into the images: holes, tears, and distortions. These arbitrary irregularities are a clear statement of defiance from a powerful artist who insists on not creating another “nice” or “perfect” piece of traditional female art.

Loom #30

Anna Lucia’s choice of colors also pushes back on traditional expectations of what we consider beautiful. Though all of the pieces draw on a meticulously designed global palette, Anna Lucia’s algorithm also allows for a degree of harshness and monotony in more aggressive outputs like the monochromatic Loom #196.

Loom #196

Loom is a series of two hundred wonderful images, but it is also so much more than that. This project invites us to shed our traditional notions of what constitutes gender-appropriate behavior and urges women to express themselves in whatever medium and manner they choose.

I'm certainly glad that Anna Lucia did!