#empathics

What in the World is an Empathic?

EIGHT WILL FALL, by Sarah Harian, Henry Holt & Company Books For Young Readers, Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group

In a land where magic is outlawed, eight criminals led by seventeen-year-old Larkin are sent on a mission to kill an ancient evil that plagues their kingdom. Descending into an underground realm full of unspeakable horrors, Larkin and her party must use their forbidden magic to survive what lies in wait, teeth sharp and jaws deadly.

As she fights for her life, Larkin finds a light in Amias, a…

The works in Disguise: Masks and Global African Art are organized around the idea that masquerade is always an art of becoming.

Through many projects, Saya Woolfalk has developed a multi-faceted world around a fictional race of part-plant, part-human women called the Empathics in order to explore hybridity and investigate the limits of human possibilities. This installation represents ChimaTEK, the Empathics’ for-profit corporation, named after the mythological Greek hybrid-animal, the Chimera. ChimaTEK offers customers the opportunity to try on new hybrid identities, to temporarily become another.

This Thursday (2/20) we will kick off the first of our new Off the Wall series with an evening exploring Afrofuturism. Off the Wall collaborates with artists to create a performative and interactive experience inspired by one of our collections or special exhibitions.

We've asked participating artists, Daví and Saya Woolfalk to explain what Afrofuturism means to their work and Saya replied: As an artist, Afrofuturism allows me a creative space that is grounded and free.  It is a gateway to other possible worlds. Not any kind of world, but a world that reckons with and dismantles the mythologies of history, and uses fantasy, trickery, and disguise to re-imagine contemporary realities.