Torkwase Dyson

Unkeeping surveys 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 deconstructs 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 solar­p​owered portable studio, Studio South Zero (SSZ). SSZ is a tiny studio that enables her site­specific 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​n​k​eeping​site physically and metaphorically through my paintings is a way to represent more complex human experiences. Traveling with my tiny studio to make drawing or paintings helps me created representations of experiences that make visible their social implications and my own perceptions of them."

The exhibition also engages Dyson’s investigations of black spatial matters and her deep interest in journalist Ida B. Wells and Caribbean theorist Sylvia Wynter. U​nkeeping follows her previous group presentation with Eyebeam in Fall 2015, O​u​tside/In, w​h​ich explored physical architecture and digital experience.