NYAB Event - Torkwase Dyson “Unkeeping”

Torkwase Dyson “Unkeeping”

Eyebeam Art & Technology Center

This event has ended.

Investigates Black Spatial Matters, Around Data, Architecture, Race and Environment.

Unkeeping s​urveys two years of Dyson’s research into minimal geometric abstraction as a system used to deepen our understanding of the built and natural environment. This ambitious work spans modular architecture, data visualization, and black spatial matters under the rubric of environmentalism. For this exhibition she presents drawings, paintings, and sculpture that deconstruct sites such as auction blocks, garrets, lynchings, and sidewalks in order to reconstruct humanist narratives in their place.

While Dyson draws on the history of minimal abstraction in her work, she also is influenced by her experiments in mobile architecture. During her tenure at Eyebeam, Dyson built a solar-­powered portable studio, Studio South Zero (SSZ). SSZ is a tiny studio that enables her site-specific research into black environmental politics and geographic identity. She explains, “Running my practice through the lens of nomadicity and autonomy helps me conceive of how u​n­keeping​ sites physically and metaphorically through my paintings is a way to represent more complex human experiences.”

The exhibition will include a program with invited scholars whose work has informed Dyson’s investigations of black spatial matters and her deep interest in journalist Ida B. Wells and Caribbean theorist Sylvia Wynter. Unkeeping follows her previous group presentation with Eyebeam in Fall 2015, O​utside/In, w​hich explored physical architecture and digital experience.

Torkwase Dyson was selected as an Eyebeam resident in an open call examining collaborative forms of architectural practice, urban presentation, policy engagement and other forms of meaningful community dialogue. Unkeeping continues Eyebeam’s commitment to supporting creative means of imagining justice. As one of two current Research Residents at Eyebeam, she received a grant of $60,000 to pursue deep-immersion research, in addition to 24/7 access to studio space, state-of-the-art technical facilities, and an active alum community. Unkeeping follows on her previous group presentation with Eyebeam in Fall 2015, Outside/In, which explored physical architecture and digital experience.

Dyson is a current Research Resident at Eyebeam. She has exhibited at Franconia Sculpture Park, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Studio Museum of Harlem, 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, 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 is based in Brooklyn, New York, and is a Lecturer in Painting/Printmaking at Yale. Read the New York Times review of Torkwase Dyson’s group exhibition, “A Constellation,” at the Studio Museum.

Media

• Drawing
• Installation

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