Born in Zambia (1988) and currently based in Johannesburg, Nolan Oswald Dennis works in drawing,painting, installation, space, time and memory. Though research-based, his work emerges as a reaction – finding its form as he tries to process his thoughts and interests, which often relate in some way to (South) African history, popular memory and information systems.
The artists writes “ I am interested in aspects of social fiction: mapping the contours of our highly coded human environment, reading the signs/ciphers/markers of blackness in thisness, the mechanics of imaginary topologies and the collapse of social certainty.

Through distorting, dismantling and dissenting archival notions of memory, my current work tries to map a history, write a present and trace a future. Using African counter-memory to populate the liminal space between the tactical fictions and strategic realities of contemporary South Africa and Africa. By reprogramming mythologies, fragmenting superstitions and exploring vernacular imaginings of the future and self, I try to stretch the possibilities of my own existence. I aim for collaborative processes and locating work in the negotiated public spaces of the metropolis – walls, surfaces, pavements, vectors, openings, spaces between.”

Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa