Saya Woolfalk: The WoodsWoman Method
On View: October 9, 2026 – March 28, 2027
As the first chapter of a multi-year initiative, Saya Woolfalk: The WoodsWoman Method presents process materials from artist Saya Woolfalk’s inaugural commission for The Bronx Museum’s renovated main lobby, opening in 2027, alongside related works from the Museum’s permanent collection.
Woolfalk envisions the WoodsWoman as a mythic botanist-healer who inhabits the artist’s “Empathic Universe,” an imagined utopian future in which humans and nature exist in harmony and diverse cultural narratives are valued.
For The WoodsWoman Method, Woolfalk applied the lens of the WoodsWoman to the Museum’s permanent collection—a unique holding of nearly 2,000 objects, focused primarily on contemporary artists of color and artists with ties to The Bronx. Woolfalk selected works by artists including Huma Bhabha, Robert Blackburn, Abigail DeVille, and Martin Wong that explore the cosmos, relationships between humans and nature, speculative worlds, and the role of collective storytelling in building community. For the first time, comprehensive records for works from the permanent collection featured in the exhibition are also available online, expanding public access to the Museum’s collection beyond its galleries.
Functioning as both an exhibition and a laboratory, The WoodsWoman Method includes programming developed in collaboration with the Museum’s Education Department. These activities will invite audiences into Woolfalk’s creative process and help inform the development of her lobby commission. This project also builds on the Museum’s longstanding relationship with Woolfalk, who completed the 2009 cycle of its prestigious AIM Fellowship, a professional development program for rising artists based in New York City.
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.
Installation Images
Installation images of Saya Woofalk: The WoodsWoman Method at The Bronx Museum. Photos by Argenis Apolinario, 2026.
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 makeup 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 opened at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, in 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 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 The Bronx Museum Board of Trustees.
