NEW YORK, NY.- Public Art Fund presents Torkwase Dyson: Akua, the artist’s first major public installation in New York City, on view at Pier 1 in Brooklyn Bridge Park from May 6, 2025, through March 8, 2026. Akua is a large, open pavilion with an immersive multi-channel soundscape that expands Dyson’s ongoing investigations of shape, light, and scale.

Akua explores new sonic encounters between bodies and environments. Using sound recordings, Dyson transforms a 20-foot-high steel-and-aluminum pavilion into what the artist envisions as a spatial drawing. Visitors are invited to enter the pavilion, where they can sit and experience recorded sound moving across eight speakers, including layered conversations from Black archives, nature field recordings, and electronic sounds.

“Akua explores how sound operates as geography, shaping our perception of space and time,” Dyson says. “The work is not about confinement, but rather about the excess of possibility beyond enclosure. It creates a place of presence, where visitors can engage with sound, light, and form in an intimate, liminal, and immersive way.”

Situated within the landscape of Brooklyn Bridge Park’s surrounding landmarks and waterways, the sculpture’s porosity offers an experience that is both open and grounding. The structure’s repeating matte black vertical slats create a sense of rhythm that echoes the movement of water and air, inviting visitors to wander, listen, and engage at their own pace.

The eight-channel sonic composition explores "breath as geography," highlighting for listeners how the space between words—subtle breaths, ums, pauses—can carry memories of specific places. Dyson prompts audiences to consider what the space between words and silence can reveal about land, water, infrastructure, and what she refers to as “a Black experience defined by the migration of sound.”

“Torkwase Dyson understands shape and light as fundamental elements guiding our experience of the world,” Public Art Fund Senior Curator Melanie Kress says. “With Akua, she creates a sculptural and sonic environment that prompts us to consider how we move through space, how we listen, and how we locate ourselves within broader historical and geographical contexts.”

The work’s title, Akua, holds deep personal and conceptual resonance for Dyson. Inspired by her wordsmith cousin of the same name, Akua means “born on Wednesday” in West African Akan tradition and reflects a philosophy of improvisation, transformation, and boundless connection.

Dyson’s art practice engages with histories of Black migration, architecture, and environmental systems through large-scale outdoor commissions that explore architectural scale across diverse sites. Her repeating geometric language, comprising curves, triangles, and rectangles, is inspired by architectural spaces used for escape and transformation. With Akua, Dyson prompts audiences to consider the space between words and silence, and what it can reveal.

Torkwase Dyson: Akua is curated by Public Art Fund Senior Curator Melanie Kress with Assistant Curator Jenée-Daria Strand.