Saya Woolfalk

Saya Woolfalk creates works of art that incorporate the African American, European American, and Japanese influences of her family background. Also alluding to science fiction, feminist theory, mythology, anthropology, archaeology, Eastern religion, and fashion, she re-imagines a utopian, empathic world through painting, sculpture, video, performance, multimedia installations, and public artworks. She is currently working on a mid-career survey titled Empathic Universe, to be presented at the Museum of Arts and Design in the Spring of 2025.

February 2025Critics Page

Goddesses and Empathic Universe

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Goddesses are archetypes; they're not really people. They do have human characteristics, and you can flesh those out, but when you're in a space with a goddess sculpture you’re simply in the presence of whatever those characteristics are.

Goddesses and Empathic Universe

March 2017Critics Page

Fantastical New Bodies

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I began to make garments when I was undergraduate in college. I was studying with feminist artists at Brown, and my work at the time attempted to complicate ideas of femininity and sexuality. I was deeply inspired by Judith Butler’s ideas around the performativity of gender, and wanted to make artworks in which a performer could become a part of an alternative symbolic language and inhabit a new body.
Saya Woolfalk, Cloudskin I, II, 2016, Inkjet prints on silk, 70 x 40 inches each. Courtesy the artist and Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects.

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