Dion “TYGAPAW” McKenzie: 3WI Opening Performance

On view November 18, 2023 through February 17, 2024, 3WI is the first institutional solo exhibition of Dion “TYGAPAW” McKenzie, premiering a newly commissioned installation combining video, sound, and performance. 3WI, or Third World immigrant, is a phrase which McKenzie uses to describe their experience of immigrating from Jamaica to the United States.

McKenzie employs the formal language of electronic music to respond sonically to questions around access, migration, mindful listening, and historical erasure which are raised by the positionality of techno on the global stage. 

By simultaneously existing as both a commodity in the nightlife economy and a hugely important and influential musical form connected to a rich lineage of Black music, techno is uniquely suited to frame an examination of the ways in which culture as a whole is instrumentalized, historicized, marketed, and celebrated. 

3WI levels an important critique of the ways in which the flow of cultural capital in a globalized gig economy often replicates broader systems of disenfranchisement, transphobia, and racism. 

Informed by McKenzie’s experiences touring the world as an electronic music producer, the exhibition’s centerpiece is a live, solo modular synthesizer and drum machine performance taking place in Art Omi’s Newmark Gallery during the opening of the exhibition on November 18, 2023.