Nolan Oswald Dennis is a para-disciplinary artist.
2023 year exhibited in Biennial Find out more
Their practice explores ‘a black consciousness of space’ – the material and metaphysical conditions of decolonization – questioning histories of space and time through system-specific, rather than site-specific interventions.
They hold a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and a Science Master’s degree in Art, Culture and Technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Their work has been featured in exhibitions at the Goodman Gallery (Johannesburg, Cape Town, London), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), MACBA (Barcelona), AutoItaliaSouthEast (London), CAN (Neuchatel), the Young Congo Biennale (Kinshasa) among others. They are a founding member of artist group NTU and Index Literacy Program (ILP), as well as a research associate at the VIAD research centre at the University of Johannesburg.
Liverpool Biennial 2023
No conciliation is possible (working diagram)
Nolan Oswald Dennis’ work ‘No conciliation is possible (working diagram)’ (2018 – ongoing) is next in their series of installations consisting of map-like wall diagrams and a shifting selection of drawings and objects which amplify the diagrams’ contents. Dennis explores the hidden structures that determine the limits of our social and political imagination. Within the diagram, the meanings of terms such as ‘welcomed and unwelcomed’, ‘apology’, ‘land’, ‘country’, ‘home’, ‘dream’ ‘ancestor’, ‘inheritance’ and ‘healing’ are complicated by their shared and unshared meanings. Meanwhile, the use of terms like ‘reconciliation’, ‘reparations’, ‘repatriation’, ‘regeneration’, ‘compensation’ and ‘justice’ can be seen as a condition and limitation of imagining a world beyond our reality. The artist is concerned with a ‘Black consciousness of space’,
Nolan Oswald Dennis’ work ‘No conciliation is possible (working diagram)’ (2018 – ongoing) is next in their series of installations consisting of map-like wall diagrams and a shifting selection of drawings and objects which amplify the diagrams’ contents. Dennis explores the hidden structures that determine the limits of our social and political imagination. Within the diagram, the meanings of terms such as ‘welcomed and unwelcomed’, ‘apology’, ‘land’, ‘country’, ‘home’, ‘dream’ ‘ancestor’, ‘inheritance’ and ‘healing’ are complicated by their shared and unshared meanings. Meanwhile, the use of terms like ‘reconciliation’, ‘reparations’, ‘repatriation’, ‘regeneration’, ‘compensation’ and ‘justice’ can be seen as a condition and limitation of imagining a world beyond our reality. The artist is concerned with a ‘Black consciousness of space’, questioning the politics of space and time. In particular, the work examines how decolonisation, colonial compensation and conciliation exist throughout history, in the present and into the future. Showing at Tate Liverpool
No conciliation is possible (working diagram)
Showing at Tate Liverpool
Monday to Sunday 10.00am-5:50pm
