ChimaCloud
Times Square Arts brought Saya Woolfalk’s brief film ChimaCloud to Times Square’s electronic billboards from 11:57 p.m. to midnight every night in June, 2016. This project was a part of Midnight Moment, a monthly presentation by The Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) and Times Square Arts.
Saya Woolfalk’s ChimaCloud transformed our metro hub and big screens into an imaginary transport hub to a utopian society where inhabitants adopt new behaviors, psychologies and physiologies. Combining animation and live action, ChimaCloud is a series of short digital videos collected from Woolfalk’s ongoing multimedia project ChimaTEK. In the multi-year projects No Place, The Empathics and ChimaTEK, Woolfalk created the kaleidoscopic 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 built the narrative of these women's lives, questioning the utopian possibilities of cultural hybridity.
During June, 2016, Woolfalk’s works also inhabited two other parts of the city. ChimaCloud: Control Center was shown on digital screens and through a virtual sculpture and live performance in Fulton Center as part of LMCC’s River To River Festival, while the Brooklyn Museum displayed one of her works as part of their exhibtion Disguise: Masks and Global African Art. These three ChimaTEK interventions offered New Yorkers and visitors an opportunity to travel between worlds as well as across the rivers, bridges and subway lines of New York City.