After attending Tugaloo College, where she majored in sociology and minored in social work and fine art, Torkwase Dyson traveled to Africa and South and Central America over ten years, strategizing with communities of color on ways to attain resource equality. During that time, she developed a multimedia practice of mark-making and abstraction that engages with theorizations of space, architecture, and economy, specifically examining environmental racism and the history, present, and future of Black spatial liberation strategies.

Dyson’s work has extended beyond traditional studio practices, too. In projects such as I Can Drink the Distance (2019) and Liquid A Place (2021), she creates installations that provide structures for collaboration with other artists, dancers, and thinkers. Her work is informed by a profound fascination with the transformations, ambiguities, and environmental changes that place nature and built environments in relationship to each other—an area of inquiry that revolves around investigating connections between imagination, materiality, geography, and belonging.

Dyson received a BA from Tugaloo College, a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. She received the Spelman College Art Fellowship (2005, 2012); the Lunder Institute of American Art Fellowship (2018); and an Anonymous Was A Woman grant (2019). The Studio Museum awarded her the Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize in 2019 and her work first entered the Museum’s collection in 2018.