Torkwase Dyson
Strange Fruit #1, 2016.
About:
My works are deconstructions of natural and built environments that influence black spatial conditions. I consider places and objects that help construct our ideas of humanness as ecological systems to be mined. Here, I question under what conditions can un-keeping a place or thing become a means of developing a deeper understanding of our own genealogy. In my drawings, paintings, and sculptures I re-image side walks, levees, slave castles, rivers, and auction blocks into minimal schematics that are mediations on human geographic development and belonging.
Strange Fruit #2, 2016.
I merge minimal geometric abstraction and the language of architecture and landscape architecture to generate an idiosyncratic language that is both meditative and structural. The results are subtle images of aerial views and ethereal objects that make my subject of deconstruction unrecognizable. In its place are new visual narratives concerning recognition, proximity, resistance, and the imagination. I combine diagrammatic and expressive marks to build compositions that affirm principles of mediation, planning, archeology, science, and the poetics of space.
Strange Fruit #3, 2016.
Under the rubric of environmentalism, my work reveals an ecological investment in spatial recuperation and sustained decolonization of both body and landscape. In both my established forms and long-term experimental projects, my work in deconstruction and environmentalism considers the liminal spaces between un-keeping and becoming an issue of black spatial dignity.(text website artist)
Strange Fruit #4, 2016.
