Nolan Oswald Dennis
Nolan Oswald Dennis is an interdisciplinary artist from Johannesburg, South Africa. His practice explores what he calls ‘a black consciousness of space’ : the material and metaphysical conditions of decolonization.
Born in Lusaka, Zambia and raised in Midrand, South Africa. He holds a Bachelors degree in architecture from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and a Masters of Science in Art, Culture and Technology for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Nolan is the 2016 winner of the FNB Arts Prize, and has exhibited in various solo and group shows, including the 9th Berlin Biennale (2016), the Young Congo Biennale (2019), Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Architekturmuseum der TU München, among others. He is participating in upcoming exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Le Lieu Unique (Nantes), and the Goodman Gallery, and is a 2020 artist in residence at NTUCCA (Singapore). In 2020 he was appointed as a Research Associate with the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, University of Johannesburg.
Dennis is currently co-editor of Indexing Imaginaries, volume 08 of the Data Browser book series on new thinking and practice at the intersection of contemporary art, digital culture and politics, published by Open Humanities Press.
His work questions the politics of space (and time) through a system-specific, rather than site-specific approach. He is concerned with the hidden structures that condition our social and political imagination. Through a language of diagrams, drawings and models he explores a coded landscape of systematic and structural conditions that organise our worlds. He is interested in systems which transverse multiple realms (technical, spiritual, economic, psychological, etc) and works to stitch these, sometimes opposed, sometimes complimentary systems together.
Links:
https://www.nolanoswalddennis.com
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