Born in Gifu City, Japan to a mixed race family marrying Asian and African American heritage, Saya Woolfalk lives, works, and performs the provocative concept of cultural hybridity. Her trans-national background informs colorful, multi-disciplinary work which explores the future of racial and cultural cross-pollination. Marrying totemic iconography with technicolor surrealism, science fiction and fantasy, Woolfalk imagines a fictional race of women able to alter their genetic make-up and merge with the natural world. Her mythical society of “Empathics” and “Chimabots” thereby ponders the possibilities for future mutations in a psychedelic, post-human arena. Via a constellation of sculptures, paintings, textiles, works on paper, photographs, collages and video, Woolfalk crafts a vivid parallel world and posits a more fluid, yet plausible, 2.0 version of humanity.

Artist

Saya Woolfalk

Curated by

Steven Matijcio, Director and Chief Curator of the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, and Valentine Umansky, Curator of Lens-Based Art at the Contemporary Arts Center

Sponsored by

Sue Friedlander Linda and George Kurz Jr.The WomxnDianne Dunkelman