Exhibition
Saya Woolfalk: Chimera
January 11 - March 1, 2014
Reception: January 11, 2014

Chimera is a science fiction inspired project about fictional humans who physically and culturally metamorphose as they merge identities and cross species, taking on characteristics of various cultures while becoming a fusion of animal and plant.
Exhibition Images
These are a selected group of works and installation photographs from the exhibition. For a complete list of available works please contact us.
Saya Woolfalk: Chimera
Saya Woolfalk’s Chimera is focused on the meanings of different kinds of hybridity. In part, this project developed out of her own experience as a black, white, and Japanese-American woman, and from her broader interest in exploring how hybridities (of cultures, races, and ethnicities; humans and machines; etc.) are becoming more apparent, but also more fraught and confounding in American society.
Chimera is an ongoing science fiction inspired project about fictional humans who physically and culturally metamorphose as they merge identities and cross species, taking on characteristics of various cultures while becoming a fusion of animal and plant. The material culture and biology of these people are the synthesis of diverse sources. Woolfalk takes seemingly non-coherent combinations to create fantastical bodies that connect with real bodies, situate them in habitable new worlds, and activate them in performance and video.
About Saya Woolfalk
Saya Woolfalk (b. Japan, 1979) is a New York based artist who uses science fiction and fantasy to re-imagine the world in multiple dimensions. With the multi year projects No Place, The Empathics, and ChimaTEK, Woolfalk has created the world of the Empathics, a fictional race of women who are able to alter their genetic make-up and fuse with plants. With each body of work, Woolfalk continues to build the narrative of these women’s lives, and questions the utopian possibilities of cultural hybridity. Woolfalk earned a BA from Brown University (Providence, RI) and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL).
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