Saya Woolfalk facts for kids

Saya Woolfalk is an American artist born in 1979 in Gifu City, Japan. She is famous for her art that mixes different types of media. Her work explores ideas about mixing cultures, science, and identity. Saya Woolfalk uses science fiction and fantasy to create new ways of seeing the world.

Her art is shown by Leslie Tonkonow Artworks & Projects in New York. She has also taught art at places like the Art Institute of Chicago and Parsons School of Design.

Early Life and Education

Saya Woolfalk was born in Japan. Her mother is Japanese, and her father is a mix of African American and Caucasian. She grew up in Scarsdale, New York. She calls herself "binational" because she has roots in two countries.

Growing up, she spent her early childhood in Japan. She also visited Japan often after moving to the United States. This background greatly influences her art. It makes themes of mixing cultures very important in her work.

Woolfalk studied at Brown University, earning a degree in Visual Art and Economics in 2001. She then got her master's degree in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. In 2006, she moved to New York. There, she joined the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program.

Saya Woolfalk's Art Career

Saya Woolfalk has shown her art in many museums. These include the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. She was an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum from 2007 to 2008.

She also took part in PERFORMA 09. She worked with her friend Clifford Owens on his show at MoMA PS1 in New York.

Art critics have praised her work. Roberta Smith from the New York Times described her 2008 work, "Ethnography of No Place," as a "tour de force." This piece combined performance, animation, and sculpture.

Holland Cotter, another New York Times critic, wrote about Woolfalk's "Empathics" in 2013. He said her figures were "fantastic" and had a "complex moral thread."

Woolfalk told AMMO Magazine that she loves building fictional worlds. She takes parts of the real world and blends them into fantasy. This makes her creations feel familiar but also new. She enjoys when her projects start to "almost make themselves."

Curator Lowery Stokes Sims wrote in 2013 that Woolfalk's art helps us think about the future. She believes Woolfalk's strong beliefs can change cultures.

Woolfalk has received many awards. These include a Fulbright grant for research in Brazil. She also got a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant. She has been an artist-in-residence at places like the Newark Museum and Yaddo.

Her solo exhibition, "The Institute of Empathy," was funded by the NEA. It was shown at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut from 2010 to 2011. Her first big solo museum show opened at the Montclair Art Museum in October 2012.

Her Artworks

Woolfalk wanted to create art that made people think about different cultures mixing. She didn't want to use her own story directly. Instead, she created a fictional world of "The Empathics."

The Empathics are a made-up group of women. They can change their genes and even mix with plants. In each of her art projects, Woolfalk adds to the story of these women. She explores the idea of a perfect world where cultures blend together. She says that because she is mixed-race, she likes to keep these ideas open for discussion. The Empathics were first shown in 2012 at the Montclair Art Museum.

No Place

No Place is a colorful world shown through dance, video, and sculptures. Woolfalk created this work after studying performances and spiritual practices in Brazil. She compared her art-making to the scientific research her husband was doing there.

In 2008, Woolfalk and anthropologist Rachel Lears asked friends about their ideas for a perfect utopia. They used these ideas to create No Place.

ChimaTEK: Virtual Chimeric Space

This artwork has been shown in major exhibitions. It was part of "Enter the Mandala" at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco in 2014. It was also in "Disguise: Masks & Global African Art" at the Seattle Art Museum in 2015 and the Brooklyn Museum in 2016.

Woolfalk was inspired by sowei helmet masks from the Sande society in Sierra Leone. This female-centered community used these masks in special ceremonies.

Influences on Her Work

Saya Woolfalk gets ideas from many different sources. These include Japanese anime and African masks and textiles used in rituals. The clothes she designs for her video works often combine these influences. This shows her ideas about cultural mixing.

She told Huffington Post that cultures build on each other. She believes American culture is a mix of many different groups. She says its history of European colonialism, slavery, and Native American history made it what it is today.

Woolfalk's own experience as a "binational" person also shaped her ideas. When she was young, she learned about plants and their connection to humans in Japan. This early learning helped her create The Empathics.

In college, she learned about the Kaki Tree project. This project involved a persimmon tree that survived the 1945 bombing of Nagasaki. Saplings from this tree were used to create cultural exchanges. This showed that new, better worlds can come from pain. This experience deeply affected Woolfalk. She said it changed how she wanted to create her future art.

Teaching and Mentoring

Saya Woolfalk has also shared her knowledge by teaching. In 2002, she started as a Teaching Artist for Publicolor in New York City. The next year, she taught at Architreasures and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 2006, Woolfalk became a thesis advisor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She also mentored artists at the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2007. She was a visiting artist at the University at Buffalo in 2009 and the University of Hartford in 2010.

From 2012 to 2018, she was an adjunct professor at Parsons School of Design. She also continued to be a visiting artist at Montclair State University.

Recognition and Residencies

Woolfalk has received several important awards. These include the Joan Mitchell MFA fellowship and the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) fellowship. She also got the Art Matters grant and the Franklin Furnace Archive Fund Grant for performance art. The Deutsche Bank Fellowship Award is another honor she received.

She has been an artist-in-residence at many places. These include the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Newark Museum of Art, and the Museum of Arts and Design. These residencies allow artists to live and work in a new environment.

Personal Life

Saya Woolfalk lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is married to Sean T. Mitchell, who is an anthropologist. They have a daughter named Aya. Woolfalk also has an art studio in Manhattan. Her background, with a Japanese mother and a biracial father, helps her explore new ideas about cultural diversity in her art.