Torkwase Dyson (b. 1973, Chicago, IL) describes herself as a painter working across multiple mediums to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture. She frequently creates compositions of three “hypershapes”—a rectangular box, a triangle, and a trapezoid. Each form references a historical person who escaped confinement through a space of that shape: for example, Harriet Jacobs, who spent seven years in a trapezoidal attic crawlspace. As representations of spaces used for escape, migration, and transformation, Dyson’s hypershapes embody a Black experience defined by constant shapeshifting and change.

Pamela Z (b. 1956, Buffalo, NY) has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan—performing in international festivals and venues including Bang on a Can at Lincoln Center, New York City; La Biennale di Venezia, IT; San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox; Japan Interlink Festival; Other Minds, San Francisco; and Pina Bausch Tanztheater’s Festival, Wuppertal, Germany. She has received commissions to compose live and fixed-media scores for choreographers and film/video artists. Her large-scale, performance works, including Memory Trace, Baggage Allowance, Voci, and Gaijin, have been presented at venues like the Kitchen in New York City; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Theater Artaud (Z Space), San Francisco; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; as well as at theaters in Washington, DC, and Budapest. Her one-act opera Wunderkabinet inspired by the Museum of Jurassic Technology (co-composed with Matthew Brubeck) premiered at The LAB in San Francisco, and was presented at REDCAT in Los Angeles and Open Ears Festival in Canada. She has shown work in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; Savvy Contemporary, Berlin; Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY; Dakar Biennale, Senegal; Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL; the Kitchen and Merkin Hal,l New York City.

Pamela Z has received commissions from chamber ensembles including Kronos Quartet, Roomful of Teeth, The Living Earth Show, Eighth Blackbird, Bang On A Can All Stars; Ethel, Del Sol Quartet, California E.A.R. Unit; Left Coast Chamber Ensemble; and Empyrean Ensemble. She recently composed a work for soprano Julia Bullock and the San Francisco Symphony. She has collaborated with a wide range of artists including Joan La Barbara, Joan Jeanrenaud, Brenda Way (ODC Dance), Miya Masaoka, Jeanne Finley + John Muse, Shinichi Iova Koga (Inkboat), and Luciano Chessa. She has participated in New Music Theatre’s John Cage festivals, and has performed with The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.

Pamela Z is the recipient of many honors and awards including the Rome Prize, MIT McDermott Award, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Dorothea Tanning Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, United States Artists, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation residency, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts; Creative Capital; the MAP Fund, the ASCAP Music Award; an Ars Electronica honorable mention; and the NEA Japan/US Friendship Commission Fellowship. She holds a music degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.