May 3–July 28, 2018
Chicago Illinois 60610
USA
Artist Torkwase Dyson engages the Graham Foundation galleries as both a site of installation for her experimental sculptures and drawing practice, as well as an incubator for discussion. Through her use of abstraction, Dyson extends the art historical cannon to ask questions about what is at stake for the production of form in the context of geography as shaped by contemporary economic and political climates. Weaving together different modes of inquiry from art, architecture, geography, and other disciplines, the exhibition initiates dialogue about environmentalism, race, and spatiality in the Anthropocene era of global crisis.
The exhibition convenes Dyson’s pedagogical project: the Wynter-Wells Drawing School for Environmental Justice—named for Jamaican writer and cultural theorist Sylvia Wynter and American Civil Rights leader Ida B. Wells. During the exhibition, talks, and workshops with architects, artists, environmentalists, poets, and scholars, create opportunities for the public to directly engage in a collective investigation into how people move through space, how space is used, how use suggests new forms, how these forms are discovered through drawing, and how these drawn forms provide context for understanding and agency in the natural and designed landscapes. Participants include Dionne Brand, Jamal Cyrus, Zachary Fabri, Ron Henderson, Andres Luis Hernandez, Christina Sharpe, Xaviera Simmons, Amanda Williams, and Nate Young, among others.
Wynter-Wells Drawing School for Environmental Justice workshops
Global Warming, Uneven Development, and New Geographies
with Amanda Williams
Thursday, June 21
Nomadicity, Movement, and Improvisation
with Andres Luis Hernandez and Zachary Fabri
Saturday, June 30
Architecture and Liquidity
with Ron Henderson
Wednesday, July 11
Related programs
Talk by urban designer and professor of architecture Mitch McEwen
Thursday, May 31
Conversation with scholar Christina Sharpe and Torkwase Dyson
Thursday, June 14
Talk and reading by poet Dionne Brand
Saturday, June 16
Torkwase Dyson, born in Chicago, is an artist based in New York whose practice draws on her interest in abstraction, social architecture, and environmental justice. Her work has most recently been exhibited in New York at The Drawing Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and We Buy Gold, as well as at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia; and the National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC. She is represented by Davidson Contemporary, New York; and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago.
Torkwase Dyson is a 2018 Graham Foundation Fellow—a new program that provides support for the development and production of original and challenging works and the opportunity to present these projects in an exhibition at the Foundation’s Madlener House galleries in Chicago. The Fellowship program extends the legacy of the Foundation’s first awards, made in 1957, and continues the tradition of support to individuals to explore innovative perspectives on spatial practices in design culture. As a Graham Fellow, Dyson is in residence throughout the run of her exhibition.
The Graham Foundation presentation of Dyson's ongoing project, the Wynter-Wells School, builds upon Winter Term, curated by Claire Gilman at The Drawing Center in New York, February 2018. An earlier version of the project was presented at Texas Tech University College of Architecture in March 2017. Poet Dionne Brand's program at the Graham is presented in collaboration with the Poetry Foundation.
