Torkwase Dyson Reflects on Hyper Shapes

A series of drawings that explore how enslaved people who sought freedom used the built environment inform the artists’ ideas around nomadicity, liberation, movement, and perception.

By: Torkwase Dyson

Hyper shapes started as drawings made in response to the spatial strategies of enslaved people who hid or were stowed away in
architectural spaces to attain their freedom, especially Anthony Burns (hull=curve), Henry “Box” Brown (box=square), and Harriet Jacobs
(garret=triangle). I developed an ecosystem of geometries connected to liberation strategies to imagine more livable infrastructures
and architectures. With Black geography in mind, I began to develop a multi-scalar approach to think about magnitude in relation
to direction and distance in relation to the corporeal, as well as the potential of improvisation in relation to projected geometries. I
needed a new set of geometric scale strategies to develop my ideas around nomadicity, liberation, movement, and perception. The
collective spatial intelligence of Black refusal provided a foundation for transformation. Hyper shapes are both compact and expansive,
porous and opaque. It is a system to maintain a discursive practice. It’s a living algorithm. I see them as discontinuous drawings that are indeterminable, interconnected, and precarious. This methodology
has produced sensoria from which painting and sculpture get imagined.