April 12, 2025

Saya Woolfalk: Empathic Universe at Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), April 12 – September 7, 2025

“The Museum of Arts and Design presents Saya Woolfalk: Empathic Universe, a parable of how cultures mix, clash, and ultimately transform through shared understanding. On view from April 12 through September 7, 2025, the multimedia artist’s first retrospective and first major museum exhibition in New York City brings together two decades of her site-specific installations comprised of garment-based sculptures, video, paintings, works on paper, and performance.

Woolfalk’s work represents one of the earliest and most influential examples of ‘world-building’ in contemporary art; her ambitious fictional narrative of an imagined race of women known as ‘Empathics’ runs throughout her entire oeuvre. The Empathics’ story is told through their own distinctive imagery, symbolism, and folklore, which reflect the artist’s investigations of African, African American, Japanese, European, and Brazilian art, craft, and storytelling.” — MAD

Saya Woolfalk. Installation view, Saya Woolfalk: No Place, University at Buffalo Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, Buffalo, NY, February 26–May 9, 2009. Courtesy University at Buffalo Art Gallery, Center for the Arts, photo: Bill Henrich
Saya Woolfalk. Utopia Conjuring Chamber, Greene County, New York, 2012. Wood, handmade paper, natural and synthetic fibers, gel medium, mannequins, beads, notions, paint, carpet, dimensions variable. Installation view, Saya Woolfalk: The Empathics, Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ, September 28, 2012–January 6, 2013. Courtesy Montclair Art Museum, photo: Peter Jacobs
Saya Woolfalk. Chimera (from The Empathics series), 2012. Natural and synthetic fibers, mannequins, handmade paper, spandex bodysuits, beads, notions, shoes, poly fill, paint, gel medium, single channel video projection, sound; dimensions variable. Installation view, Migrating Identities, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, June 28–September 29, 2013. Courtesy Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, photo: John White
Saya Woolfalk. Installation view, Saya Woolfalk: ChimaTEK: Hybridity Visualization System, Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York, January 17–March 07, 2015. Courtesy Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects
Saya Woolfalk. Installation view, Saya Woolfalk: Expedition to the ChimaCloud, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, March 1–September 1, 2019. Courtesy Nelson-Atkins Digital Production & Preservation, photo: Dana Anderson
Saya Woolfalk. Floating World of the Cloud Quilt, 3-channel video projection, natural and synthetic fibers, digitally printed vinyl flooring, plastic, paint, paper, beads, notions, gel medium, 406 × 72 to 144 (variable) × 108 in. (103.2 × 182.9 to 365.8 [variable] × 274 cm). Installation view, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Rudin Family Gallery at the BAM Strong, April 4–June 18, 2022. Courtesy Brooklyn Academy of Music, photo: Etienne Frossard
Saya Woolfalk. Plucked from a Jangling Infinity (for Daphna Mitchell, My Mother-in-Law), 2023. Glass, steel, paint, 3 channel video projection, 192 × 180 × 192 in. (487.7 × 457.2 × 487.7 cm). Installation view, Saya Woolfalk: Heart of a Museum, Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, October 19, 2023–February 4, 2024. Courtesy Currier Museum of Art

“With its sumptuous handmade aesthetic, interdisciplinary approach, and searching examination
of how craft shapes and reflects global cultures, Saya Woolfalk: Empathic Universe offers both an environment for meditation on the complex times in which we live, and a hope for a better, more compassionate way toward navigating the turbulence together,” said the exhibition’s curator,

Alexandra Schwartz, MAD’s Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Craft, and Design. “Saya, an alumna of MAD’s Artist Studios program, was also featured in our 2022 exhibition Garmenting: Costume as Contemporary Art. We are thrilled to now present her first retrospective,” said Elissa Auther, MAD’s Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and William and Mildred Lasdon Chief Curator. “Like many artists who have received their first major museum exhibitions at MAD, Saya’s artmaking synthesizes diverse and unexpected genres, cultures, and materials to explore society’s most pressing concerns. In her Empathic Universe, she envelopes us in fantastical new forms of creative expression while raising the question: what world do you want to live in?”

Images courtesy Museum of Arts and Design.