59th Carnegie International

GRAY artist Torkwase Dyson is one of fourteen commissioned artists for the 59th Carnegie International, If the word we, on view at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from May 2, 2026–January 3, 2027.

Dyson’s commission, Tomorrow Was Yesterday (2026), is a two-part presentation comprised of a video animation screening at the Kamin Science Center’s Buhl Planetarium, and an installation at the museum. Informed by the artist’s ongoing research into oil and gas drilling in the Caribbean seabed, the commission brings together her examination of environmental conditions and histories alongside present strategies of Black liberation. Torkwase asks, “What is the magnitude of oil and gas extraction infrastructure? Why is there an incomprehensible distance between our everyday lives and the extraction points sprawled across this planet’s seabeds? Seadbed mining is a transhistorical issue and I center process as a way of understanding its history and scale.”

The animation anchors the commission, immersing viewers in an underwater world visually dominated by Big Oil machinery. Drawings, paintings, sculpture, and a mixed-media installation used for the animation extend the creative expression of Dyson’s research. Together, the works produces a studio-like environment that functions both as a site of inquiry and a window into the artist's interconnected practice.

“When I’m making work to comprehend… any extraction geography,” Dyson states, “drawing and sound take me to a transhistorical mindset…. I start responding as a maker to my sensoria, [and] I can be present in the metamorphosis and [in] a radical indeterminacy.”

Organized every four years by the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Carnegie International is the longest-running exhibition of international art in North America. The 59th edition is organized by Ryan Inouye, Danielle A. Jackson, and Liz Park, who were named the Kathe and Jim Patrinos Curators of the exhibition in November 2023. Drawing from a commissioned catalogue essay by writer Haytham el-Wardany, the exhibition approaches “we” not as a unified subject but as a complex and porous position, attentive to contradiction and change. New and existing works by 61 artists are featured at the museum and partner institutions—including the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, Kamin Science Center, and Mattress Factory. By embracing many forms and sites, If the word we underscores the breadth of approaches shaping contemporary art and creative practice today.