Saya Woolfalk's solo exhibition "Empathic Universe" at the Museum of Arts and Design (Mad) in New York presents two decades of her visionary world-building practice. The show unfolds in five chapters, featuring sculptures made from textiles, videos, performances, and immersive digital installations that trace the evolution of fictional plant-and-human hybrid races. Woolfalk discusses the origins of her project, which began after her return from Brazil with works like "Winter Garden: Hybrid Love Objects" (2005) at MoMA PS1, and how the Empathic Universe came into focus during her time in the Whitney Independent Study Program around 2006, drawing on mythology, anthropology, technology, and feminist theory.
The exhibition matters because it offers a rare immersive experience that aims to make viewers feel interconnected with nature and each other, embodying Woolfalk's political and critical vision of creating community and empathy through art. By spanning works from 2003 to 2023, including pieces held in major museum collections like the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Seattle Art Museum, the show demonstrates how Woolfalk's evolving exploration of utopia, feminism, and social transformation remains deeply relevant in contemporary art discourse.