Torkwase Dyson (born Chicago) received a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1999 and MFA from Yale School of Art in painting/printmaking in 2003. Working in multiple mediums, Dyson describes herself as a painter whose forms address the continuity of ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. She merges ideas such as site and built environments, nature and culture under the rubric of environmentalism. Fascinated with transformations, ambiguities and environmental changes that place these subjects in relationship to each other, her work revolves around investigating our connections to imagination, materiality, geography and belonging.

Solo exhibitions of Dyson's work have been presented at the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery at Columbia University GSAPP, New York; the Houghton Gallery at Cooper Union, New York; the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago; Bennington College VAPA Usdan Gallery, Vermont; Colby College Museum of Art, Franconia Sculpture Park, Maine; Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, and Davidson Contemporary, New York. Group exhibitions include Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC; Between the Waters at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary at the California African American Museum, as well as the 2019 Sharjah Biennial. Dyson is a recipient of the Anonymous Was A Woman Award, the Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize, the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant, Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists, The Lunder Institute of American Art Fellowship, Spelman College Art Fellowship, Brooklyn Arts Council grant, Yale University Barry Cohen Scholarship, the Yale University Paul Harper Residency at Vermont Studio Center, Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practices, FSP/Jerome Fellowship and Yaddo. Dyson’s work has also been supported by the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, The Laundromat Project, the Green Festival of New York, Obsidian Arts and Public funds of the City of Minneapolis, Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia, The Kitchen, and Dorchester Projects in Chicago. Torkwase Dyson lives and works in Harlem and Newburgh, New York and is a critic at the Yale School of Art.