Nolan Oswald Dennis Back

Nolan Oswald Dennis is a para-disciplinary artist based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Their practice explores ‘a black consciousness of space’ - the material and metaphysical conditions of decolonization - questioning histories of space and time through system-specific interventions.

They hold a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits 2012) and a Science Master’s degree in Art, Culture and Technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT 2018).

They work within and against a grammar of world-making: using indexical, analytic and educational devices (drawings, diagrams, maps, models, etc) as ambiguous tools for rehearsing possible meanings rather than forms of instruction. Their practice recombines social, technical, political and spiritual systems grounded in a planetary condition of landlessness and guided by the overlapping theories and practices of black, indigenous and queer liberation.

Their work has been featured in exhibitions at the Goodman Gallery (Johannesburg, Cape Town, London), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Van Abbemuseum, the Seoul Mediacity Biennial, Young Congo Biennale (Kinshasa), FRONT triennial (Columbus), Shanghai Biennial, Videobrazil, Liverpool Biennial and the Lagos Biennial among others.

They are a founding member of artist group NTU, a research associate at the VIAD research centre at the University of Johannesburg, and a member of the Index Literacy Program.

whya
2024

Nolan Oswald Dennis's whya, is a memory server collaging fragments of oral histories from the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom

College (SOMAFCO) collected by the artist. Through an interactive digital structure, Dennis questions how memories are collected, reflected upon, and shared, proposing a relational approach to memory which embraces uncertainty, hesitancy and the ambiguities of trust.

See the artwork

For the second edition of the Post-National Digital Pavilion, iniva presents Unseen Guests: a series of commissions of eight artists based in the UK and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), working across new media, audiovisual and writing to create new works in dialogue with the work of filmmaker and artist John Akomfrah, representing Great Britain at the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale

The Institute of International Visual Arts (iniva) is an evolving visual arts organisation dedicated to nurturing and disseminating radical and emergent decolonising and unlearning practices centring Global Majority, Indigenous, African, Asian, Caribbean, Polynesian, Latinx & Diaspora perspectives that reflects on the social and political impact of globalisation.

The Pavilion is a series of radical re-imaginings of nationhood, reflecting on the entanglement between land and water, movement and m/otherlands, in the forging of new identities and subjectivities.

The project is supported by British Council.

Unseen Guests is curated by Beatriz Lobo Britto and Renée Akitelek Mboya, and produced by Leanne Petersen.

Artists developing new works include ibiye Camp, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Gladys Kalichini, Rodrigo Nava Ramirez, Shamica Ruddock, Yaa Addae, Alexis G Teyie and Helena Uambembe.

Unseen Guest Project Team

Sepake Angiama - iniva Artistic Director
Beatriz Lobo - UK Curator
Renée Akitelek Mboya - SSA Curator
Leanne Petersen - Project Producer
Rodrigo Nava Ramirez - Web Development and Design

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