Torkwase Dyson in Conversation

The Wexner Center’s 2020–21 Artist Residency Award recipient in visual arts, Dyson describes herself as a painter working across multiple mediums to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. Examining environmental racism as well as the history and future of Black spatial liberation strategies, Dyson’s abstract works grapple with the ways space is perceived and negotiated, particularly by Black and brown bodies. In 2019, Dyson’s solo exhibition I Can Drink the Distance was on view at The Cooper Union, New York, and her work was also presented at the Sharjah Biennial.

In addition to participating in group exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC; the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York; and the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, Dyson has had solo exhibitions and installations at Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine; Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago; Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia; and Suzanne Lemberg Usdan Gallery, Bennington College, Vermont. Read more

Hamilton is a visual artist internationally recognized for her large-scale multimedia installations, public projects, and performance collaborations. Responsive to the contingencies of the sites where she works, her recurring forms—cloth, texts spoken and written, animals, and people suspended or in motion—immerse viewers in an atmosphere both visceral and literary, individual and collective, animate and inanimate, silent and spoken.

Born in Lima, Ohio, in 1956, Hamilton received a BFA in textile design from the University of Kansas in 1979 and an MFA in sculpture from the Yale School of Art in 1985. From 1985 to 1991, she taught on the faculty of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Hamilton has served on Ohio State’s faculty since 2001, where she is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Art. Among her many honors, Hamilton has been the recipient of the National Medal of the Arts, MacArthur Fellowship, United States Artists Fellowship, NEA Visual Arts Fellowship, and the Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. Read more.

Kochar teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on architecture in Ohio State’s Knowlton School. Since 2015 she has served as the director of the Architecture Honors Program and the chair of the school’s Banvard Gallery, where she has curated and designed several exhibits.

Kochar is the principal founder of A Studio, which has exhibited in multiple venues including CBUS Ideabook at The Center for Architecture and Design (Columbus), Otterbein University, The Ohio Art League Juried Competition, and University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. She has also worked in various offices in the US and India on the completion of several international projects and, with Inform Architects, has completed multiple award-winning projects in India. Read more.