Saya Woolfalk Presents Hypnotic Digital Fantasia FLOATING WORLD OF THE CLOUD QUILT at BAM

Site-specific immersive exhibition on view at the Rudin Family Gallery until June 11.

By: May. 12, 2022
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Saya Woolfalk Presents Hypnotic Digital Fantasia FLOATING WORLD OF THE CLOUD QUILT at BAM

"Floating World of the Cloud Quilt" is a monumental digital projection installation on view at BAM's Rudin Family Gallery by multidisciplinary artist Saya Woolfalk, and is curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah, BAM's Guest Curator-at-Large.

This exhibition culls together more than fifteen years of archival material from Woolfalk's "Empathic Universe", a fictional race of women who are able to alter their genetic make-up and fuse with plants, to create a collective embodied experience.

"Floating World of the Cloud Quilt" draws from three terabytes of archival files which transforms the gallery into a immersive video installation bathed in an ambient soundscape by Dim Gurevich, and an ever-shifting digital collage that creates a "quilted sky" stitched together with images of medicinal plants, elements from astrology, mandalas, and variations on sacred vessels and artifacts from around the world.

Woolfalk cultivates unified multimedia spaces by blending analog and digital materials together. The imagery starts as hand-painted paper and as other handmade objects before being digitally translated, which creates a hybrid collage process.

The installation is presided over by the four ethical goddesses of the Empathic Universe who are based on the four cardinal virtues Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude. These figures act as guardians of the space and are integral to the exhibition's conversation.

"With this work I want to immerse everyone in the archive of the Empathic Universe in the form of what I call 'The Cloud Quilt'," says Woolfalk. "Quilts often take the well-worn pieces of our everyday lives and recombine them to create something new. When the elements are recombined, the quilt retains all of the traces of history and becomes an object that can be used in service to something else. A quilt is an object of comfort, warmth, and protection, and it is also a space for dreaming. With this work, I took a number of historical elements from the Empathic Universe, and quilted them together so the audience can experience what being immersed in that world feels like."

"Saya Woolfalk is a multi-hyphenate artist who, for the past two decades, has built visionary spaces that stimulate the imagination, activate spirit, and immerses us in the logic and language of this Empathic Universe that she has created," says Ossei-Mensah. "'Floating World of the Cloud Quilt' is the next chapter in the plethora of experiences Woolfalk has cultivated via her practice."

**All performances will adhere to protocols developed in accordance with New York State regulations and in consultation with medical professionals for the safety of our artists, audiences, and staff. **

Learn more at BAM.org.



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