Birthing a New Sky (Mira and Sora).
The central figure in Birthing a New Sky (Mira and Sora) has immediate, obvious associations with the Buddha, and with meditation and enlightenment. But it’s not just a generic picture of a spiritual leader. The silhouette is specific; it’s an individual, a real person, alive today. Colors course through the shape of their body, the shadows of multitudes of people. The image buzzes with movement and growth, but also exudes balance and peace, connection with nature and with the self. It points toward the future with a sense of genuine, earned lightness and hope.
The piece is part of “Field Notes from the Empathic Universe,” a show of work by artist Saya Woolfalk, organized by Kalia Brooks, running now at NXTHVN, 169 Henry St., through Nov. 19. The show also ties into the 6th Dimension Festival, curated by Juanita Sunday, with a panel discussion about Afrofuturism and visual culture on Oct. 14 at 5 p.m., which will feature Woolfalk in conversation with Jahmane and moderated by Sunday.
It’s easy to see how Woolfalk’s artistic practice dovetails with other works in 6th Dimension. “Known for site-specific multimedia installations that respond to global traditions and cultural differences, Woolfalk is the creator of the Empathics, fictional futuristic beings who time travel and shape-shift across the multiverse,” an accompanying note explains. “For this project, Woolfalk studied herbaria (plant specimens) and landscape painting collections, reinterpreting these artifacts — and their relation to American identity — from the perspective of the Empathics. Focusing on local plants with healing properties and paintings of the Hudson River School, Woolfalk connects the American landscape with real and imagined worlds, past, present and future.”
Encyclopedia of Cloud Divination.
The description gets at the way Woolfalk’s art balances playful and serious elements to create an atmosphere that feels deeply serene, yet with a persistent, pulsing energy. One wall is lined with portraits of what Woolfalk calls The Four Virtues — Temperance, Fortitude, Justice, and Prudence — but they come across as pictures of fantastical aliens, or spirits from another realm, chimeras suffused with imagination. Another series of images, each titled Encyclopedia of Cloud Divination, has the same wild invention put to it, with the same overall result; it quickens the mind at the same time that it lowers the blood pressure. The three floor pillows all but invite viewers to take a seat (this reporter did not), and to use the images as meditation aids, or triggers for mental exploration.
The overall mood of that front gallery is established in part by the music emanating from the gallery in the back. That gallery serves as the temporary home for Cloudscape, a thoroughly immersive piece that this reporter found quite difficult to leave. Cloudscape literally animates the ideas in the front gallery. Human, plant, and animal forms commingle, flowing together to create a cohesive whole in which all of the individual elements are still distinct, crucial parts. It feels like something from the far future, but also hearkens to the distant past, to the echo of a common ancestor far back in the chain of evolution, before the differences between plant and animal even existed. Cloudscape dislocates the viewer from our current reality by creating another one, through a vision of compassionate humanity so attuned to the rest of the world (the universe, even?) as to become more of a part of a it. Woolfalk makes us want to be part of it, too.
“Field Notes from the Empathic Universe” runs through Nov. 19 at NXTHVN, 169 Henry St. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information about related events.
