Saya Woolfalk: Empathic Universe
Installation view: Saya Woolfalk: Empathic Universe at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, 2025. Photo by Jenna Bascom; courtesy the Museum of Arts and Design
Saya Woolfalk is a multidisciplinary artist who uses science fiction and fantasy to create immersive installations featuring sculptural garments and kaleidoscopic video and sound that transport visitors into the world of the Empathics, fictional beings whose story runs throughout Woolfalk’s artworks.
Description
Throughout her two-decade career, Saya Woolfalk has crafted the elaborate story-world of the Empathics. This imagined society of women—part plant and part human—is distinguished by their extraordinary capacity for empathy. Through multimedia installations, paintings, sculptural garments, dazzling projections, and performances, Woolfalk invites audiences to imagine themselves within this alternate universe.
Woolfalk takes recognizable elements from the real world and blends them with imagery and symbolism distinctive to the Empathics, yet informed by her own Japanese, African American, and European American family histories. She shapes the Empathics’ story by drawing on a wide range of craft traditions and materials, from felted garments to hand-blown glass to digital quilt projections, that come together in ways both familiar and futuristic.
Ultimately, the Empathic Universe is a parable of how cultures mix, clash, and transform through shared understanding.
The presentation at SAAM’s Renwick Gallery is the third stop on a national tour.
A beautifully illustrated catalogue will be available in the museum's store and online ($45).
An audio guide, Utopia Within, was produced by the Museum of Arts and Design as a collaboration between the artist and the Atlantic Acting School/New York University with support from Bloomberg Connects. It was written and directed by Alison Beatty and Lorielle Mallue and features performances by Atlantic Acting School students.
Visiting Information
Credit
The Smithsonian American Art Museum presents an adaptation of Saya Woolfalk: Empathic Universe originally presented at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, 2025. Generous support is provided by the Bernstein Family Foundation, Norbert Hornstein and Amy Weinberg, the Jack and Marjorie Rachlin Curatorial Endowment, and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation. Additional support is provided by Michael Abrams and Sandra Stewart and Share Fund.
