Saya Woolfalk Bio :
Artist Saya Woolfalk (NY) works at the confluence of science fiction, anthropology, technology, and art to imagine a world that is simultaneously set in the future and the past.
The gifted artist Saya Woolfalk grew between three different worlds, the American, African American, and Japanese worlds. Which helped her to develop an understanding of the different cultures and gave her the benefit of experiencing different traditions.
Saya Woolfalk is a New York-based artist who uses science fiction and fantasy to re-imagine the world in multiple dimensions. she created amazing projects combining reality with fantasy like No Place, The Empathics, and ChimaTEK, Woolfalk has created the world of the Empathics, a fictional race of women who are able to alter their genetic make-up and fuse with plants. With each body of work, Woolfalk continues to build the narrative of these women’s lives, and questions the utopian possibilities of cultural hybridity.
Saya Woolfalk graduated from Brown University in 2001 with a B.A in visual Art and Economics in 2001. Saya first entered college as a premed student, later she realized that this was not her passion, Therefore she changed majors to follow her passion and leaped after her dream of creating a connection between fantasy and reality. Her work also helped with getting cultures’ obstacles out to every one to hear about through her artwork or a spiritual dance like the one she created for the African American Women.
No Place
No Place
“No Place” is a culmination of work done over four years. Combining multiple media, such as painting, performance, sculpture, and video, Saya Woolfalk presents a world of her creation, inhabited by denizens of her own design, namely the Empathics. The world of No Place is, to Woolfalk, a look into the future, a look at a utopia. She uses this project to blur the lines between real life and fantasy as she considers different possible futures.
The Empathics
The Empathics are a race of human/plant hybrid people that were created by Saya Woolfalk. In the lore of these people, a group of women found a burial site filled with half plant-half human skeletons, the Empathics. After long exposure to the remains, the group of women also began turning into Empathics. This race of people span multiple years of Woolfalk’s works, as she works to show off their culture, their rituals, and even how one can undergo the process of hybridization. The Empathics exist under her works “No Place”, “The Empathics”, “ChimaCloud”, and “ChimaTEK”.
The Empathics
Diagrams & Drawings
Saya Woolfalk uses diagrams as visuals to express her artistic creativity by blurring the lines between fiction and reality
This drawing depicts creatures with human-like bodies and inhumane intelligence. These creatures lived off the land and practiced spiritual rituals related to technology, plant life, and consciousness
“Plant alchemy”
Graphics, like the one presented here, act as timelines, telling stories through vivid colors and imagery.
Woolfalk’s art shows empathics working with their environment, using energy from plants to grow.
Symbols such as bees, trees, and a big blue butterfly make viewers think of their relationships with nature.
The Pollen Catchers’ Color Mixing Machine
Hybrid Digital Home
The Hybrid Digital Home project uses interactive installation and computer coding to emphasize multiculturalism. Saya Woolfalk collaborated with her daughter to reinvent the Institute of Contemporary Art’s Bank of America Art Lab. The images combine different textile patterns from multiple cultures which then create a home.
Visionary Reality Threshold :
In partnership with the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), ArtWorks brought internationally renowned contemporary artist, Saya Woolfalk, to Cincinnati, to create a new mural alongside her 2019 exhibition at the CAC.
ChimaCloud Control Center:
A video installation and performance piece of Saya Woolfalk’s ChimaCloud Control Center project. This also engaged viewers to participate with the art through an app that allowed you to access the ChimaCloud by hovering your device over the costumes. Accompanied by banners that further navigated the audience’s experience.
Diverse Mediums & Canvases
Saya Woolfalk’s works extend beyond our reality and touch upon a multitude of narratives. Her storytelling adapts and reconfigures into different mediums, locations and canvases, with depth and consideration for every detail.
Woolfalk’s work covers mediums like textiles, sculpture, and projection art. She has been known to display art through videos, electronic billboard displays, and performance. With some work that touches upon augmented reality, collage, LED Walls, and Murals, Woolfalk has demonstrated the wide variety of mediums artists could use to present their talents. She has used different fabrics, materials and mixed media to display her work. Within some examples of her public art she uses ceramic tile, smalti glass, and laser cut stainless steel in accordance with the environment the art was surrounded by.
Aiming to provide a hands on experience with art, Woolfalk presented interactivity and participatory exhibitions to engage her audience, including children. Her projects range from micro canvases, such as small artifacts, to macro canvases, such as basketball courts, buildings and the human body. When exhibiting her work, she utilizes the walls, ceilings, and floors. Every inch of space is considered with careful composition and color. These details in her work create an extremely immersive experience for her audience and narratives.
ChimaTEK Beta Launch:
In Saya’s project ChimaTek Beta Launch she created a genetic change in the new world that she created which made the native people of the world developed a second head. This led to a change in the whole world and created new creatures. Which we can connect to in a way today with the many problems that are happening in today’s world, for instance, global warming, deforestation, water level rising, and COVID-19. All of these changes in our world can change the lifestyle that everyone is used to and change traditional life forever. By looking into Saya’s Art projects it opens up everyone’s eyes on how our world would look like: if a genetic change occurred due to the crisis that the world is going through to the next generations to help them to be able to survive with the new climate and environment.
The great experience of meeting the artist Saya Woolfalk in the Newark Museum
Grit is having the passion and perseverance for very long term goals and that’s what the Artist Saya Woolfalk had. By having a strong grit she was able to work hard to make her dreams turn into a reality, not just that but she connected her reality to her dreams. Saya followed her passion, grew her mindset, and was willing to come out with her experiences and exposition to different cultures with lessons learned. With Woolfalk’s great efforts in her projects, she was recognized by millions of people from all around the world. She created her own world museums which inspired people across the globe.