Artist Qualeasha Wood Says Viral 'Bedrot' Performance Copied Her Work

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Viral 24-Hour Instagram Reels Performance in Montreal Triggers Copying Allegations From Qualeasha Wood

A 24-hour performance built around the numbing churn of Instagram Reels has become the latest flashpoint in a familiar art-world debate: when does a shared cultural gesture become a borrowed artwork?

Over the weekend, an artist working under the alias Aphex Redditor drew widespread attention after spending a full day lying down and continuously scrolling through Instagram Reels as part of a durational piece titled“BedRot.” The performance took place at Eastern Bloc, an art center in Montreal, running from Friday into Saturday. In the gallery, a screen displayed the same feed the artist was watching, turning a private, algorithm-driven habit into a public spectacle.

As documentation of the work spread across Instagram and X, artist Qualeasha Wood accused Aphex Redditor of copying a performance Wood had staged the year before.

Wood's earlier work,“Attention Economy,” was presented in March 2025 at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery in London. The gallery's materials for that exhibition explicitly referenced“bed rotting,” a term used online to describe staying in bed for long stretches with minimal activity. In Wood's performance, a screen showing a feed from her phone appeared alongside her. She later repeated“Attention Economy” at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in September.

Wood's performance practice has also included tapestries that layer images of the artist in a way that echoes the visual logic of browser windows and stacked digital interfaces. Those textiles have helped bring her broader visibility: one tapestry that appeared on the cover of Art in America was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Online, Aphex Redditor's“BedRot” quickly became a point of fascination. One X post -“I am the only person watching her bed rot on reels in this art gallery at 2AM” - amassed more than 66,000 likes. Wood responded directly in the thread:“Oh I love seeing my work copied word for word bar for bar.”

In a subsequent Instagram post, Wood framed the controversy through the lens of race and reception, writing that similar actions are often dismissed when performed by a Black woman but become“romanticized” and“viral” when enacted by someone with“pale skin.” She added that“rest IS political” and described rest as bound up with privilege.

Contacted via Instagram direct message, Aphex Redditor said she had not been aware of Wood's work prior to presenting“BedRot.” She said she had been developing the performance with Eastern Bloc since December 2024 and described her intention as an inquiry into algorithms: tracking how a social media feed evolves over a durational period.“My practice as a whole is very centred on the internet and online culture, which was my intention with the performance,” she said.

Aphex Redditor also acknowledged the uneven distribution of attention that can follow viral moments, adding that Wood“deserves the same recognition for her work from the media.”

Wood did not respond to an additional request for comment submitted through a representative for Pippy Houldsworth Gallery.

The dispute arrives at a moment when performance art is increasingly mediated by platforms built to reward repetition, legibility, and rapid circulation. As artists continue to stage work that mirrors the rhythms of online life, questions of authorship, credit, and the politics of visibility are likely to remain close to the surface - especially when the algorithm, rather than the gallery, becomes the loudest curator.

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