Saya Woolfalk: WoodsWoman: Ancient Ocean/Future Fossil

WoodsWoman: Ancient Ocean/Future Fossil reimagines Henry Moore’s sculpture as a speculative creature emerging from Texas's geological past during the Cretaceous period, when much of the region was submerged beneath the Western Interior Seaway. Inspired by Moore’s own description of his sculpture as resembling a giant animal or a whale emerging from the water, Woolfalk’s transformative projection brings together ancient marine life, fossils, and the geological landscapes of Texas, connecting the natural history of Dallas with the imagined world of Woolfalk’s Empathic Universe.

The project is informed by Woolfalk’s WoodsWoman Method, an interdisciplinary approach that combines ecological research and speculative worldbuilding to imagine new relationships between humans and the natural world.

The work also references H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu, an ancient, otherworldly creature that lies dormant beneath the ocean, evoking mysterious life forms and submerged worlds. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s concept of the Chthulucene, the work imagines a world in which humans and nonhuman beings are deeply entangled across geological time, suggesting new ways of understanding our relationships with the more-than-human world.

About the Artist

Saya Woolfalk is a New York-based artist who uses science fiction and fantasy to reimagine the world across multiple dimensions. Through the multiyear 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 while questioning the utopian possibilities of cultural hybridity.

Woolfalk has exhibited at museums, galleries, and alternative spaces throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States. Her exhibitions include a major survey at the Museum of Arts and Design (New York City), followed by a solo exhibition at the Crow Museum of Asian Art (Dallas). She has also held solo exhibitions at the  Montclair Art Museum, the Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA), the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the SCAD Museum of Art (Savannah, GA), the Everson Museum of Art  (Syracuse, NY), the Sheldon Museum of Art (Lincoln, NE), and the Mead Museum of Art (Amherst, MA).

Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Mead Art Museum, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, the Newark Museum, the Chrysler Museum of Art, and the Seattle Art Museum, among others.