Saya Woolfalk’s artwork re-imagines the world in ‘multiple dimensions’ to explore issues of identity. In her #MTAArts project “Urban Garden Rail” (2017) at the Van Siclen Ave (3) Station in Brooklyn, Woolfalk reflects the people of the East New York community who have worked together to enrich the local community by reclaiming vacant lots to transform into local gardens, resulting in fresh produce for neighborhood residents’ consumption. The figures and the patterns in the painted steel panels capture the beauty, pride and intergenerational collaborations embedded in these spaces.
Woolfalk explores questions of identity and belonging in two related shows currently on view at the Newark Museum, where she is an artist in residence. Responding to historical landscape paintings and plant specimens in the museum’s collection, "Saya Woolfalk: Field Notes from the Empathic Universe" includes an immersive four-channel video installation that creates a luminous environment of plant forms, digitally constructed portraits and landscape fragments. “Saya Woolfalk: Tumbling Into Landscape” is an intervention into the Museum’s American art and natural science collections, and features a new life-size abstracted self-portrait with a selection of the Museum’s Hudson River School paintings.
Photo of artist at Newark Museum via Saya Woolfalk by Joe Wong.
