Torkwase Dyson

Featuring unconventional materials and a range of written responses from her peers, Torkwase Dyson’s first publication is an artful, indispensable volume.

Through her multidisciplinary practice guided by her working philosophy of Black Compositional Thought, Torkwase Dyson creates unique curvilinear and rectangular hypershapes and abstractions that speak to infrastructures of liberation and resistance. With its large-scale, site-specific installations and accompanying layered paintings, A Liquid Belonging, Dyson's recent exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York, explored these geometries on an architectural scale to invite viewers into new spatial and perceptual practices.

The accompanying publication takes a similar approach, asking readers to engage with the forms and spatial actions that make up a book. Composed of one bound paper book and an array of unbound materials—including acetate and accordion-folded paper—all contained in a box-slipcase, it is as much an art object as it is an addendum to the exhibition. With new texts and experimental writing by Dionne Brand, LeRonn P. Brooks, Saidiya Hartman, Jaleh Mansoor, and Mabel O. Wilson and a conversation with Christina Sharpe, Torkwase Dyson: A Liquid Belonging takes a multifaceted approach to represent the artist’s wide influence.