Torkwase Dyson, Moments Between (Auction Block), pen on paper, 2015
Thursday, October 6, 2016 , 5:30 PM | Center for Creative Photography 108
Lecture: Illegal Abstraction A Single Author
Torkwase Dyson distills and deconstructs natural and built environments to consider how individuals negotiate and negate various types of systems and systemic order. In this presentation she will discuss abstraction as a multi-direction action that can distance us from lived experiences, but also bring us closer to our own humanity. Interested in the plurality of abstraction as a political presence that prioritized subjectivity, she explores the spatial strategy of enslaved people who hid or stowed away in architectural spaces to attain their freedom. She deconstructs these histories through an architectural lens to examine abstraction as a transpatial strategy that each embodied to defy the state.
Bio: Dyson’s work has been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Corcoran College of Art and Design, the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. She has been awarded the Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists, Visiting Artist grant to the Nicholas School of the Environment, the Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practices, and the FSP/Jerome Fellowship. Torkwase is now based in Brooklyn, New York.
