Between the Waters

In her Water Table series, Torkwase Dyson transforms geologic diagrams of underground water systems into abstractions of the earth’s interconnected layers. For Dyson, the physical borders and structures that modify the land and water have a profound impact on our bodies and psychic environment. While her paintings allude to Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, Dyson deploys tropes of both to create meditations on the waters that sustain life but face depletion and contamination. Through her abstract gestures and the work’s enveloping scale, she reflects on how infrastructural policies and design can alter the environment—and also how these shifts historically have shaped human movement through forced migration, colonization, and slavery.