In the Curator’s Words: At the Athenaeum, Johannesburg-based artist Nolan Oswald Dennis explores the concept of territory

In the Curator’s Words is an occasional series that takes a critical look at current exhibitions through the eyes of curators.

As of June of this year, Zambia-born and Johannesburg-based artist Nolan Oswald Dennis has had three solo exhibitions all over the globe: “UNDERSTUDIES” at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, “overturns” at Swiss Institute in New York and “throwers” at Gasworks Gallery in London.

This month, Dennis can make that four solo exhibitions. The latest one, “Demonstrations (i),” opens Oct. 24 at La Jolla’s Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, which is presenting the show in partnership with INSITE, a binational organization with two nonprofits based in San Diego and Tijuana.

Since 1992, INSITE has produced “more than 250 artists’ projects conceived for specific sites and political-social contexts across San Diego and Tijuana, as well as in Mexico City. In 2021, it launched INSITE Commonplaces, an initiative that has commissioned work in San Diego, Baja California, Johannesburg and Lima.

The Athenaeum describes Dennis’ work this way: “Informed by the study of geological and planetary systems — and situated within African and diasporic relations to the land, cosmos and anti-colonial political structures — Dennis’ work approaches the world as it is while mapping possibilities for transforming it.”

As an artist, Dennis sits at the intersection of disciplines, interests and identity — exploring cultural, social and political structures, and what lays just outside those human-made boundaries. It’s an approach that the artist once called exploring “a Black consciousness of space.” Physically, these explorations can be seen in Dennis’ use of drawings, diagrams and 3D models, sometimes incorporating them with poetry and language.

Parts of the La Jolla exhibition — which are making their West Coast debut at the Athenaeum — were part of previous shows in the Netherlands, London and New York, where Dennis made an artistic U.S. solo debut at the Swiss Institute in Manhattan’s East Village.

Andrea Torreblanca, chief curator and editor for INSITE, talks about the exhibit, which is on display through Jan. 17.

Q: Tell us more about this exhibit featuring works by Nolan Oswald Dennis. How did this come to be?

A: Curator Gabi Ngcobo commissioned Nolan Oswald Dennis to create a new work based on their perception of territory for INSITE Commonplaces in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2021. INSITE Commonplaces is a curatorial platform established in 2021 that produces work with artists and communities commissioned locally in different regions of the world.

The exhibition “Demonstrations (i)” will feature several works, including “further notes 4 a planet (nine-dash),” 2024, a sculpture composed of bead chains with verses from South African poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, who bridged continental Africa and the Black Arts Movement in the U.S.; “Articulated globe 01 (double),” 2024, which rearticulates and challenges Western scientific knowledge and cosmologies; “interference station I,” 2023, a sound piece in which two voices read accounts from explorers at the North Pole and in Greenland; and “Isivivane,” the work originally commissioned for INSITE through which Nolan replicates rocks with a 3D printer to create what they call a “Black Earth Library,” centered on the notions of restitution and repatriation of culturally significant objects. These “geopoetic gestures” take inspiration from the artist’s ongoing conversations with geologists and geology museum curators.

Q: What aspects of Dennis’s work do you think will resonate with people who visit the Athenaeum?

A: One of Nolan Oswald Dennis’ most interesting ideas is the act of making and unmaking worlds through language, drawing, geology, poetry and other systems that connect political and social spheres. Audiences will see how rocks are replicated in real time and learn about the importance of geologic time and how we interpret history and memory through collections and artifacts in museums. By addressing notions of dispossession and racialization, Nolan aims at looking for ways to repair the world.

Q: What do you hope the audience will take away from this exhibit?

A: Hopefully, the audience will find alternative ways of thinking about nonlinear understanding of time and history, as well as ways to think critically about colonial and postcolonial scenarios and imagine how world strategies and relations work.

Athenaeum Music & Arts Library presents “Demonstrations (i)”

When: Reception: 5:30 to 8 p.m. Oct. 24 (open to the public). On display through Jan. 17.

Where: Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, 1008 Wall St., La Jolla

Admission: Free

Phone: 858-454-5872

Online: ljathenaeum.org