Nolan Oswald Dennis (*1988, Zambia) inaugurates a site-specific, monumental diagrammatic artwork spread across the back wall of Kunsthalle Basel. Built on discussions with physicists, geographers, and writers, the project employs mathematical abstractions, African fractal geometry, and other representational models to chart the systems, logics, and meta-histories of a world dependent on racialized, gendered, classed, and geographic exclusions. This new work borrows from various earth divination practices shared across the Sahara to reimagine a different African-European (dis)continuum. As Dennis’s first such artwork in public space, the project is imagined as a tool for disorientation—a technical diagram offering viewers a method for reconsidering concepts of space, time, history, and possibility.
➔ Exhibition text (PDF)
➔ Press images (ZIP)
In a collaboration that extends the back wall project, a recurse 4 [3] worlds by artist Nolan Oswald Dennis, Kunsthalle Basel and Culturescapes 2023 Sahara teamed up with Carhartt WIP to create a limited edition artist T-shirt!
Read more about the collaboration in the Culturescape magazine.
The T-shrits are available only at the Kunsthalle Basel book shop. Grab yours before they’re gone!
Press clippings:
Ein schwarzes Diagramm zur Reorientierung der Welt, Radio X (10/2023)