Torkwase Dyson describes herself as a painter working across multiple mediums to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture.
2023 Biennial Year Find out more
Examining environmental racism as well as the history and future of black spatial liberation strategies, Dyson’s abstract works grapple with the ways in which space is perceived and negotiated, particularly by black and brown bodies.
Dyson studied Sociology, Social Work and Fine Arts at Tougaloo College in Mississippi and received a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia in 1999 and an MFA from the Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut in 2003. Solo exhibitions of her work have been presented in numerous institutions, including the Hall Art Foundation, Schloss Derneburg, Germany; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery at Columbia University GSAPP, New York; the Houghton Gallery at Cooper Union, New York; the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago; Bennington College VAPA Usdan Gallery, Vermont; Colby College Museum of Art, Franconia Sculpture Park, Maine; and Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia.
Dyson is a recipient of the Anonymous Was A Woman Award, the Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant, Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists, The Lunder Institute of American Art Fellowship, Spelman College Art Fellowship, Brooklyn Arts Council grant, Yale University Barry Cohen Scholarship, the Yale University Paul Harper Residency at Vermont Studio Center, Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practices, FSP/Jerome Fellowship and Yaddo. Dyson currently lives and works in Beacon, New York.
Liverpool Biennial 2023
'Liquid a Place' (2021)
Examining the history and future of Black spatial liberation strategies, Torkwase Dyson’s work grapples with the ways in which space is perceived and negotiated, particularly by Black and Brown bodies. Through her ongoing research, she explores the relationship between geography, ecology, infrastructure and architectural imagination.
Here, appearing both static and fluid simultaneously, three structural giants are in direct conversation with the dark and violent histories of the water and docks which surround the gallery – a feat of architectural engineering and imagination, Britain’s first commercial wet dock was built in Liverpool in 1715 to service and expedite the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
The artwork’s forms echo the curve of a ship’s hull, whilst the triangular voids within them might signify a gateway, a
Examining the history and future of Black spatial liberation strategies, Torkwase Dyson’s work grapples with the ways in which space is perceived and negotiated, particularly by Black and Brown bodies. Through her ongoing research, she explores the relationship between geography, ecology, infrastructure and architectural imagination. Here, appearing both static and fluid simultaneously, three structural giants are in direct conversation with the dark and violent histories of the water and docks which surround the gallery – a feat of architectural engineering and imagination, Britain’s first commercial wet dock was built in Liverpool in 1715 to service and expedite the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The artwork’s forms echo the curve of a ship’s hull, whilst the triangular voids within them might signify a gateway, a shelter, or the sailing route between Europe, West Africa, and the Americas upon which up to 2.4 million enslaved Africans lost their lives. Dyson suggests that water can be a place to feel with and through others; a simultaneous space of resistance, terror, conflict, pollution, oppression, refuge, extraction and liberation. Courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery.
'Liquid a Place' (2021)
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Torkwase Dyson, ‘Liquid a Place’, 2021. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tate Liverpool. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Mark McNulty
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Torkwase Dyson, ‘Liquid a Place’, 2021. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tate Liverpool. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Stuart Whipps.
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Torkwase Dyson, ‘Liquid a Place’, 2021. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tate Liverpool. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Stuart Whipps.
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Torkwase Dyson, ‘Liquid a Place’, 2021. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tate Liverpool. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Stuart Whipps.
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Torkwase Dyson, ‘Liquid a Place’, 2021. Liverpool Biennial 2023 at Tate Liverpool. Courtesy of Liverpool Biennial. Photography by Stuart Whipps.
