VIDEO OVERVIEW
Torkwase Dyson was the Lunder Institute visiting artist for Fall 2018, when she also presented Nautical. Dusk, a new body of site-specific work, at the Colby College Museum of Art. Dyson deploys a distinctive language of geometric abstraction developed through a wide-ranging investigation of visibility, mobility, the physical environment, and science and scientific discourse.To develop Nautical Dusk, Dyson consulted archival materials in Colby’s Miller Library Special Collections related to Samuel Osborne (c. 1833–1904). Osborne was born into slavery and migrated from Virginia to Maine in 1865. He worked for the College for more than thirty years, and in 2017 Colby President David A. Greene renamed the presidential residence “Osborne House.” “I extrapolate from those things [i.e. the archive and subsequent events and circumstances] to ask phenomenological questions around geography, proximity, transference, clarity, seeing, belonging,” said Dyson. During her tenure with the Lunder Institute, Dyson continued to work in Special Collections and met with Colby students and faculty from across the curriculum. This hybrid platform, which combined creative research with ongoing reflection and conversation, allowed the artist to explore intersections with scholars from multiple disciplines including astronomy, art history, creative writing, and anthropology. Some of these encounters were captured in a series of unscripted recorded conversations. Dyson’s engagement with the Lunder Institute culminated in an open workshop and suite of programs in and around Nautical Dust.