Zeitz MOCAA
08.10 - 27.07.2025

Nolan Oswald Dennis uses the museum space as a site for knowledge generation and collective engagement in their first major solo exhibition with Zeitz MOCAA, titled ‘UNDERSTUDIES’. The exhibition interrogates notions of knowledge, authorship, and relationality. The relative nature of cosmology and time are key aspects of Dennis’ artistic explorations, and the link between science and art is made abundantly clear.

In many ways, Dennis has the sensibility of a scientist, a cosmologist. ‘UNDERSTUDIES’ is unique in its method of presentation and categorisation – the exhibition feels more like a living, breathing library than an archive. The works are separated into smaller rooms, each representing one aspect of Dennis’ artistic exploration. One room houses the still, quieter works such as drawings and sculptures, and is reminiscent of a technician’s office or workshop. Drawings resemble maps, diagrams, Earth models, and technical cross-sections. In Habeas Viscus (Feminine), drawings of knotted rope are overlayed with arrows that represent violence and power – the forces that twist and knot human experience into inorganic ways of being. In this way, Dennis uses diagrammatic drawings to illuminate the various social and political structures that bind and change marginalised bodies. 

Along the corridors, small alcoves house models of the Earth rendered with alternate poles and equators, providing the viewer with a hypothetical reading of our planet that challenges the scientific canon. Another room is covered entirely in wallpaper representing the night sky from a southern hemispheric perspective. Delicate black curtains separate this room from a small wooden cabinet housing various objects and artefacts, a material library titled Cabinet of Solidarities (thirdist). ‘UNDERSTUDIES’ is an ongoing, ever-expanding body of work that critically engages the concept of art making as a research methodology. Dennis invites the viewer to engage in a level of truth-seeking that is particularly unique, posing multiple questions at once: What is true about the Earth? How does the exhibition space translate as a site of experimentation? How is knowledge created? What is the meaning of collective thought? And what does it look like in the context of the exhibition space?

In Xenolith (Letsema), one is confronted with a column of packed earth, which stands in dialogue with the exposed foundations of the museum’s original structure. Bands of coloured sand have been pressed together, creating a similar effect to that of ageing rock. The column stands on a raised platform, towering with soft colours – forest green, muted red, mild ochre –indicative of the tones that colour the Earth. In the exhibition, this work seems the closest to nature and natural forms.  

The artist relinquishes sole authorship of this work (and many others in this exhibition) and acknowledges the communal effort that brought it to life. The artwork takes its subtitle from the Setswana word for ‘voluntarily working together’. In this way, Dennis encourages us to consider the act of art making as a method of communal knowledge generation – a decolonial way of viewing art that rejects the Western ideal of the revered genius. Making in community is the conceptual crux of Xenolith (Letsema).

In Black Liberation Zodiac (Molalatladi), a wallpaper installation immerses the viewer in a remapped version of the night sky. Here, Dennis invites us to question the Western cosmological canon. Instead of reading the stars from a north-south perspective, Dennis remaps the night sky to read exclusively from the southern hemisphere’s perspective. The artist, therefore, circumvents a Western view of cosmology and, by extension, Western notions of the passage of time. Various symbols associated with Black liberation overlay the new constellation system – raised fists, panthers, doves, and a sickle and hammer. In this way, the artist presents us with a ‘counter-cosmology’ that figures the night sky through a southern African indigenous lens. For example, one of the constellations represented on the wall features a star named iQhawe, or Hero. The artwork uses a southern African indigenous language of liberation to counteract or challenge Western scientific canons that Black people were forced to assimilate to. 

In biko.fanon, the artist invites us to imagine a hypothetical dialogue between Steve Biko and Frantz Fanon, two leaders of Black liberation thought. An algorithm is used to simulate a conversation between the two thinkers, drawing from their writings. The resulting exchange has been printed onto receipt paper. One passage reads, ‘Now the problem is to lay hold of this violence which is changing direction/ because of the privileged place which they hold.’ The thought experiment generates poetic exchanges between two great minds that never actually happened, thereby creating ‘a space for collective dreaming’. The use of a relatively simplistic method of printing – using thermal receipt paper – combined with an AI-generated hypothetical conversation provides an interesting juxtaposition. This reflects the thesis of ‘UNDERSTUDIES’, which is to place concepts, ideologies, and objects in conversation with one another, creating contrast and tension. 

Dennis approaches the process of art making with the sensibility of a scientist, engaging with materials in a systematic and conscious way. With ‘UNDERSTUDIES’, he creates a new mode of art-making-as-research, where the exhibition space becomes a library of collective thought and communal engagement. In a world that is so technologically-focused, Dennis has sought new ways of harnessing the methodology of science to pioneer an alternative way forward.