About the Program
Join us for a conversation between artist Torkwase Dyson and scholar Daphne A. Brooks as they discuss Akua, the artist’s first public project in New York City, and the sound research that bridges their respective crafts. Together, they will discuss Dyson’s architectural pavilion, on view in Brooklyn Bridge Park, as a porous encounter between sound, place, and history. The speakers will connect Brooks’s academic chronicling of Black female musicians to the seismic sonic landscapes found in Dyson’s compositions for Akua.
Attend in person at The Cooper Union’s Great Hall. Registration is required, and capacity is limited. Seating is first come, first served, so please arrive early. Your registration does not guarantee a seat. Doors will close at 6:45pm.
Accessibility: Email Gabriela López Dena, Associate Curator of Public Practice, at [email protected] with questions and requests for accessibility. Please send any needs for services or accommodations to support your participation in this program, including ASL interpretations, hearing aids, and simultaneous translation, by October 21.
Image:
Torkwase Dyson
Akua, 2025
Powder-coated steel and aluminum, eight-channel sound
Courtesy of the artist, Pace Gallery, and GRAY Chicago | New York
Photo: Nicholas Knight, courtesy Public Art Fund, NY.
Presented by Public Art Fund at Brooklyn Bridge Park, May 6, 2025 – Mar 8, 2026.
About the Speakers
Torkwase Dyson describes herself as a painter working across multiple mediums to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. She frequently creates compositions of three “hypershapes”—a rectangular box, a triangle, and a trapezoid. Each form references a historical person who escaped confinement through a space of that shape: for example, Harriet Jacobs, who spent seven years in a trapezoidal attic crawlspace. As representations of spaces used for escape, migration, and transformation, Dyson’s hypershapes embody a Black experience defined by constant shapeshifting and change.
Daphne A. Brooks is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Music at Yale University. She is the author of Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race and Freedom, 1850-1910, winner of The Errol Hill Award for Outstanding Scholarship on African American Performance from ASTR; Jeff Buckley’s Grace and Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound, winner of eleven book awards and prizes. Brooks has written liner notes for artists such as Prince and Nina Simone, and her 2010 notes for The Complete Tammi Terrell as well as 2011’s Take a Look: Aretha Franklin Complete on Columbia have each won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for outstanding music writing. Her edited essay anthology Blackstar Rising & The Purple Reign: Pop Culture and the Sonic (After)Lives of David Bowie and Prince is forthcoming from Duke University Press in 2026.
About Public Art Fund Talks
Public Art Fund Talks, organized in collaboration with The Cooper Union, connect compelling contemporary artists to a broad public by establishing a dialogue about artistic practices and public art. The Talks series features internationally renowned artists who offer insights into artmaking and its personal, social, and cultural contexts. The core values of creative expression and democratic access to culture and learning shared by both Public Art Fund and The Cooper Union are embodied in this ongoing collaboration. In the spirit of accessibility to the broadest and most diverse public, the Talks are offered free of charge.
Location
Public Art Fund Talks are made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, as well as by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Public Art Fund is supported by the generosity of individuals, corporations, and private foundations, including lead support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, along with major support from the Abrams Foundation, the Charina Endowment Fund, The Cowles Charitable Trust, the Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, The Fuhrman Family Foundation, Agnes Gund, The Marc Haas Foundation, Hartfield Foundation, KHR McNeely Family Foundation | Kevin, Rosemary, and Hannah Rose McNeely, the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, Red Crane Foundation, the Meyer and Deanne Sharlin Foundation, and The Silverweed Foundation.
