Saya Woolfalk: The WoodsWoman Method
As the first chapter of a multi-year initiative, artist Saya Woolfalk, who completed the Museum’s prestigious AIM Fellowship in 2009, presents The WoodsWoman Method at The Bronx Museum from October 9, 2026, through winter 2027.
For The WoodsWoman Method, Woolfalk has applied the lens of her WoodsWoman project to the Museum’s permanent collection—selecting artworks that explore related themes including speculative worlds, the cosmos, relationships between humans and nature, and the role of collective storytelling in building community.
Woods Woman process materials will be presented alongside Woolfalk’s selections from the collection, and the artist will facilitate workshops with the Museum’s Education Department as part of this multi-faceted project.
Functioning as both an exhibition and laboratory, The WoodsWoman Method will inform Woolfalk’s commissioned inaugural installation for the Museum’s renovated main lobby, made possible with support from VIA Art Fund.
The WoodsWoman Method was curated in collaboration with Eileen Jeng Lynch, The Bronx Museum Director of Curatorial Programs, with support from Summer 2026 Curatorial Intern Karthik Tambar.
About Saya Woolfalk
Saya Woolfalk (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 can 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.
Her many public commissions include The Coretta Scott King Peace and Meditation Garden, which was dedicated at the King Center in Atlanta in April 2023. Other commissioned works include murals for Penn Station, the Metropolitan Transit Authority; a public school in Queens for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs School Construction Authority; and a basketball court in Marcus Garvey Park.
A comprehensive, traveling survey of works by the artist is scheduled to open at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York in April of 2025.
Works by Saya Woolfalk are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Chrysler Museum of Art; the Mead Museum of Art; the Everson Museum of Art; the Weatherspoon Art Museum; the Hunter Museum of American Art; and many other institutions.
Woolfalk earned her B.A. in visual art and economics from Brown University in 2001 and her MFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. Her many honors and awards include a Fulbright grant to study in Brazil (2005); a residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2007); and most recently, the 2023 Anonymous Was a Woman award.
Support
This exhibition was made possible, in part, by Commissioning Sponsor VIA Art Fund and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
The Bronx Museum’s operations are generously supported, in part, with public funds from the City of New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Bronx Borough President Vanessa L. Gibson, New York City Council, Council Member Althea Stevens and the Bronx Delegation, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, New York State Education Department, New York State Empire State Development, New York State Office of Children and Family Services, Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie, New York State Senator Luis Sepulveda, and New York State Senator Jose M. Serrano. Additional support is provided by the Americans for the Arts, Booth Ferris Foundation, Charina Endowment Fund, Cowles Charitable Trust, Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, The Ford Foundation, Francena Harrison Foundation, Jockey Hollow Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, Hyde and Watson Foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, MacMillan Family Foundation, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund: Culpeper Arts & Culture Program, Scherman Foundation, Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, Individuals and Bronx Museum Board of Trustees.
