In July 2015, when I encountered the installation by the New York–based artist Saya Woolfalk in the Disguise: Masks and Global African Art exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, I felt like I’d entered an ecstatic, sci-fi world inhabited by cyborgs and unfathomable technology. In a darkened room, mandalas painted on the walls flickered while rainbow-patterned mannequins wore elaborate, fantastical costumes with glittery, butterfly-like embellishments, skirts with triangular pieces of fabric layered like reptilian scales, and headdresses topped with small chimeras...