Zeitz MOCAA Hosts: Exhibition Tour of Nolan Oswald Dennis's UNDERSTUDIES

Zeitz MOCAA presents UNDERSTUDIES, the first major South African museum solo exhibition by artist Nolan Oswald Dennis, who lives and works in Johannesburg.

Join the curator from Zeitz MOCAA for a guided art walk of UNDERSTUDIES on Saturday, 22 Feb from 10:00-11:00AM.

The exhibition embraces and maintains a dialogue with the artist’s longstanding para-disciplinary approach. Interested in the fraught history of scientific representation and intervention, the artist encourages us to think of artworks as models, diagrams, hypothetical annotations and simulations rather than sculptures, drawings and installations.

The exhibition opens 8 October 2024 on Level 3, Elevator Side of the museum and runs until 25 May 2025

Nolan Oswald Dennis (b. 1988, Lusaka, Zambia) is an artist based in Johannesburg, South Africa. The artist’s practice explores the material and metaphysical conditions of decolonisation, questioning the politics of space and time through a system-specific approach. 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.

Dennis holds a Bachelor of Architectural Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand (2012) and a Master of Science in Art, Culture and Technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (2018). They are a founding member of the artist group NTU; as well as the Indexing Literacy Program, a collaborative research project collecting new theory for our indexical present; and the convenor of black earth study club, a network for planetary solidarity. Dennis is the 2016 winner of the FNB Art Prize, the 22nd Sesc_Videobrasil Biennial Jury Prize (2023) and is a 2023-24 Future Generations Art Prize nominee.

They have exhibited in various international solo and group shows, including at the Young Congo Biennale (2019), Palais de Tokyo (2021), Dakar Biennale (2022), Front Triennial (2022), Liverpool Biennial (2023), Shanghai Biennial (2023) amongst others.

Their writing has been published in academic and art publications including The Funambulist, CLARA Architecture/Recherche Journal, Unearthing Traces, Mater, amongst others. They are currently a Research Associate at VIAD, University of Johannesburg; co-editor of Indexing Imaginaries, volume 08 of the Data Browser book series published by Open Humanities Press and editor of the 2024 Cosmic Bulletin published by e-flux.