She picked me up a day late, but right on time. Torkwase Dyson looked younger than when we had last seen each other, lighter on her feet. This time she had more of a do for ourselves
attitude. I was prepared to talk with her about an event she is going to be a part of this Saturday – Atlantis- a house dance party with blackness and science fiction as its central theme with Octavia Butler's Wild Seed as inspiration. Her contribution is an underwater video piece of
fish off the coast of Panama, a dark, otherworldly abyssal piece. She was not interested in talking about this at all. She wanted to talk about relationships, women, about my writing, my family, and about sustainability and urban farming. We did spend time talking about her other work and our breakfast turned into a gallery visit, then lunch, and later coffee and much more than I had hoped for.
Torkwase Dyson and I met at NYU in the
fall of 2004 at the Yari Yari Pamberi, a conference of Black Women Writers Dissenting Globalization. YYP was an amazing assembly of working writers and artists from all over the African Diaspora: Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Sapphire, Alexis DeVeaux, Octavia Butler, Nawal El Sadawai, Edwidge Danticat, Jewell Gomez -- all together with an ease that comes from camaraderie between peers.
It also provided safe space for a community of younger artists and writers to converge.
Torkwase Dyson grew up on Chicago's Southside. She got her MFA from Yale. After many years of traveling and temporary stopovers at academic sites across the country, she seems committed to stay in one spot. This day she was
moving her studio out of her small Prospect Park apartment across town to a small studio in the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn. Her walls had the grey outline of paintings that had long hung there. The last of many moves, this was the move to stay put.
To start, we had smoothies. Torkwase nervously cleaned as she cooked. She refused my offers to help, leaving me to observe her world. Her roommate's dogs were sleepy and fat. The larger one was brown and had a squarely shaved patch on his rear from a recent surgery. Every seven minutes, the quintessential rumble of the train blazed past her window. As she served us grits with eggs, hash browns, and biscuits, she explained that she just started teaching at American University in Washington, D.C. -- commuting there twice a week on the Bolt bus. "After assessing student interest, skills, backgrounds," she said, "I am hoping to create student think tanks and charge them with creating media works together."
We began by talking about the new show she is a part of which is opening in a few days at Five Myles Gallery in Brooklyn. The exhibition of seven young black women artists entitled "Fortune Tellers" will feature work she describes as "common objects replaced with uncommon imagery, the transfiguration of the common place." The show's artists work in many different media-- two-dimensional wall pieces, animation, collage, floor pieces, instillation. Torkwase's contribution to this show is from her larger body of work, an exploration of "the hyper urban landscape and its relationship to the natural." She said of her work, "I am looking at the intense imagery of nature on clothes: belt buckles, jeans, so called fancy shirts, sneakers. And using those visual objects- apparel stuff and manipulating it to resemble nature." She described a work entitled "Waiting for the Son to Rise" that features Jesus piece necklaces fashioned with tiny solar panels, a take on fake diamonds, on bling. We looked at her large wall pieces-- works that featured whales and swans and rhinos--
created using earring cards and something called bullet heads as well as large metal necklace charms. These images startle, the texture is reflective and tactile.
"I am concentrating on basic gestures," she tells me, "and on the underbelly of communities on lockdown." There is a real thread of ecology in the body of work as well, when I ask her about this she says, "Yes, yes, with the cyclical threads in fashion, the speed with which subculture is adopting new items of significance, things like earring cards get disregarded. We hear about water bottles, but the greens don't address all the plastic that our merchandise comes attached to." With this work she is "reimagining- reuse."
"The urban environment is in many ways an environment of trash," Torkwase said, "I travel to get these apparel items, I travel to Houston, Memphis, Atlanta, New Orleans and it's a piece of this system of global trade, of Asian wholesalers and African immigrants making a dollar. "
We discussed the future-- the future of the earth, our individual work, the movement, art. She plans to take her work in a new direction. "That's my next project," she said, "I want to follow fabric- apparel production routes: dyes, fabrics, accessories, wholesale. A meditation on access to information, working through the façade of the global cycles of desire, for merchandise produced for black urban poor spaces."
"I am going to create these kiosks, mobile units with solar panels-- enough to create like 60 watts of electricity and bring them up to 125th street, where there are still guys selling merchandise in an independent way and see how they are received." She finished by saying that in her opinion "the idea of blackness is shifting; the idea of hip hop culture is shifting."
We moved together from her apartment to the Five Myles Gallery where the Fortune Tellers show is to open next week. Our time there was pensive, hands on hips, arms crossed. Passing and pausing. The floor was tacky with new paint.
The gallery visit was an experience in politics. Torkwase was mentoring the show's young curator--
who felt uncomfortable with the title
and liked organizer
better. She studied Kwase to try to read an opinion there in her guarded glances. The owner, an older woman with a thick German accent, looked over the top of her glasses, gestured wildly to get the attention of her construction assistant to request that he move the platform for the projector a few inches to the right. The lighting was harsh and spotlights blazed haphazardly waiting for their position. The walls were that new gallery grey with a touch of ocean or purple. The conflict lie in which wall would best suit Kwase's digital piece and which would suit her larger wall piece in relationship to other works in the show. Slight changes were made and made again.
Kwase was diplomatic, yet later in the car she spoke of the need for Black women run spaces. Spaces where there wouldn't be the hovering, older, how it's done opinion. "Power is in ownership." Later as we drove, she pointed out several vacant buildings suitable to fill this need. "Look, you could have a studio on the first floor."
We ended the interview
at her other home-- a small, black lesbian owned café called Pillow. The space was comfortable and her friends were quick to joke, quick to laugh.
The patio out back was bright with light flickering as the breeze pushed branches and leaves gently. I was grateful to end our time together here, with her family and the inspiration of a community of women creating spaces for themselves.
Dyson, Torkwase. Interview. Brooklyn, New York. September 9, 2009.
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