Saya Woolfalk
2026-2027 THOMAS SCHROTH VISITING ARTIST SERIES
Saya Woolfalk
Oct. 14-17, 2026
Interdisciplinary Artist
Collaborators: Taryn McMahon, Darren Bade
New York-based interdisciplinary artist Saya Woolfalk visited Kent State Oct. 14-17 as part of the Thomas Schroth Visiting Artist Series. Her work blends science fiction, anthropology and biology to explore how we see ourselves and the world around us. During her four-day residency, Woolfalk worked with students and faculty from the College of the Arts, the College of Sciences and Humanities and the College of Architecture and Environmental Design.
Her visit included the “Woods Woman Method” workshop, a guided walk along the Cuyahoga River with Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Darren Bade, during which participants recorded what they saw, heard and smelled through drawing and writing. A roundtable discussion followed with Professor and Interim Director of the School of Art Taryn McMahon, Professor Joseph Underwood and Associate Professor Bade. Woolfalk also met with School of Art graduate students in their studios to offer feedback on works in progress, and she closed her visit with a public lecture on her development as an artist and her interests in science fiction and nature.
About Saya Woolfalk
b. Gifu City, Japan, 1979; lives in Brooklyn, New York
Saya Woolfalk 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 question the utopian possibilities of cultural hybridity. Her midcareer survey show Empathic Universe was presented at the Museum of Arts and Design in 2025, and will travel to the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in 2027 and the Hunter Museum of American Art in 2026.
Woolfalk has had solo exhibitions at numerous institutions including, among others, the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Crow Museum of Asian Art, Dallas, TX; Newark Museum of Art, NJ; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ; the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia; the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; Savannah College of Art and Design Museum, Savannah, GA; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; and the Mead Museum of Art, Amherst, Massachusetts. She has participated in group shows at the Studio Museum in Harlem; MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY; the Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA., the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, among many others. Her works are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Mead Art Museum, the Weatherspoon Art Museum; the Newark Museum of Art; the Chrysler Museum of Art; the Seattle Art Museum, and many others. Woolfalk is represented by Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York. She teaches in the MFA and BFA programs at Parsons: The New School for Design.
