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.

Working across media, Dennis’s 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 pre-determine the limits of our social and political imagination. Through a language of diagrams, drawings, and models, he explores a hidden landscape of systematic and structural conditions that organize our political sub-terrain. This subspace is framed by systems that transverse multiple realms (technical, spiritual, economic, psychological, etc.) and therefore Dennis’s work can be seen as an attempt to stitch these—sometimes opposed, sometimes complimenta­ry, systems together—and to read technological systems alongside spiritual systems, to combine politi­cal fictions with science fiction.

Dennis’s new commission for the biennial Xenolith Field questions the politics of space and time through the use of soil as a complex model for social life. His ongoing series of Xenolith sculptures are to be found across three sites in Borås, linking the city to an ongoing investigation of a black consciousness and the material and metaphysical condi­tions of decolonization. The artist’s installation at the museum further explores these ideas through a large wall diagram and sculptural works that map new associations, systems, and cosmologies that hold emancipa­tory potential.

Dennis holds a degree in architec­ture from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and a Master of Science in Art, Culture and Technology from the Massa­chusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Recent solo exhibitions and presentations include: Options at Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa (2019) and Furthermore at Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa (2016). Selected group exhi­bitions and fair presentations include: A Better Version of You, Goethe Institute, Beijing, China; African Mobili­ties, TUM, Munich, Germany; In the Open or in Stealth, MACBA, Barcelona, Spain;Tell Freedom: 15 South Afri­can Artists, Kunsthalle kAde, Amersfoort, Netherlands (all 2018); Deep Memory, Kalmar Konsthall, Kalmar, Sweden; In No Time, MIT, Cambridge, USA; and 89plus: Americans 2017, LUMA Westbau, Zurich, Switzerland (all 2017).