61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia

For the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, curated by Koyo Kouoh, Torkwase Dyson debuts Tougaloo, an immersive sculptural installation with sound.

Working within a distinct abstract language, which the artist terms  “Black Compositional Thought," Dyson employs forms refracted from histories of Black self-emancipation to explore the spatial dimensions of freedom. Presented at the Arsenale, Tougaloo draws on the artist’s experience at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, a campus where nineteenth-century plantation architecture exists alongside Modernist structures.

Christina Sharpe writes “Dyson’s installations and paintings are arc and ribcage, overhang and surface. Cement and graphite conjure water, extraction, hum, breath and its absence. Sonic wavelength becomes another material to extend a line and expand a field. Her works are studies in possibility, where a curve, a line, a wave, a sound/ing are acts of holding and practices toward liberation."

The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia is on view from Saturday, 9 May to Sunday, 22 November 2026.

Torkwase Dyson (b. 1973 Chicago, IL; lives and works in Beacon, NY) combines expressive mark-making and geometric abstractions to explore continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. Working in painting, drawing, sculpture and sound, Dyson interrogates the built environment, exploring how individuals, particularly black and brown people, negotiate, negate, and transfer systems of spatial order. Throughout her work and research, Dyson confronts issues of environmental liberation and envisions a path toward a more equitable future.

Dyson studied sociology and social work at Tougaloo College, Mississippi (1996), and received a BFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University (1999) and an MFA in Painting from Yale University School of Art (2003). In 2026, Dyson will debut a commissioned work as a featured artist for the 59th Carnegie International, as well as a new installation for the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. She will also have her first solo exhibition in Austria at Kunsthaus Bregenz.