Torkwase Dyson, Liquid Shadows, Solid Dreams (A Monastic Playground), 2024

This new film centers on Torkwase Dyson’s large-scale sculpture Liquid Shadows, Solid Dreams (A Monastic Playground), the Whitney Museum’s inaugural Hyundai Terrace Commission for site-specific projects. Installed outdoors on the museum’s fifth-floor terrace as part of the 2024 Whitney Biennial, this work is sited within view of New York’s Hudson River, witnessing and responding to different conditions of light, sound, and space. Here, Dyson sheds light on her approach to creating the sculpture and discusses its engagement with the city’s interconnected ecological, infrastructural, and social histories. “I hope that people respond to the work based on their own conditions of improvisation, interiority, play, and mindfulness,” she says in her narration of the film, adding that her improvisations in the physical making of this work are “geared toward a freedom of self.”