Zeitz MOCAA presents ‘A: Black Consciousness of Spacetime’ by Nolan Oswald Dennis at FNB Art Joburg

Media release

Zeitz MOCAA presents A: Black Consciousness of Spacetime by Nolan Oswald Dennis at FNB Art Joburg, 3–6 September 2026

(Cape Town, South Africa, Thursday, 27 August 2026): Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) returns to FNB Art Joburg 2026 with A: Black Consciousness of Spacetime, a presentation by Johannesburg-based artist Nolan Oswald Dennis that revisits UNDERSTUDIES (2024–2025), the artist’s first major South African museum solo exhibition.

As a Pan-African and Pan-Diasporic institution based in Cape Town, Zeitz MOCAA is committed to expanding its reach beyond its physical location and engaging audiences across South Africa. Our annual cultivation event in Johannesburg, strategically hosted during FNB Art Joburg, reflects this broader institutional commitment to connect key partners across the Museum’s ecosystem. These relationships demonstrate the value of collaboration across the arts, corporate and philanthropic sectors, while strengthening the networks and partnerships needed to support a more connected and sustainable cultural landscape.

UNDERSTUDIES positioned the exhibition as a site of experimentation, where diagrams, drawings, models and collaborative gestures became ways of interrogating geo-cosmic epistemologies and political readings of time. Following this proposition, A: Black Consciousness of Spacetime considers Dennis’s practice as a rethinking of space as a relational and transforming field shaped by geological, ecological, metaphysical, political, social and pedagogical frameworks.

Zeitz MOCAA’s booth at FNB Art Joburb foregrounds Xenolith (Letsema) (2024) and Soft Rock (leNqaba yoMkhosi) (2024), two works that extend this thinking through materiality and collaboration. Xenolith (Letsema) borrows its subtitle from a Setswana word for ‘voluntarily working together’, a word with a political history connected to collective labour in the South African liberation struggle. Its making began with an invitation to specific museum staff members to think within and alongside Dennis’s practice, relinquishing singular authorship and institutional hierarchies through which knowledge and objects are produced. The seven tightly packed and layered maquettes of pigmented soil are presented alongside the recipe books and a poem by Talia Mzamane from the museum’s Collections department.

Similarly, Soft Rock (leNqaba yoMkhosi), developed in collaboration with artist and writer Vusumzi Nkomo, brings geological matter into relation with the social and material processes it encounters. Together, the works resist stable definitions of land and matter, proposing a position in which relations, transformations and forms of knowledge remain in motion.

A: Black Consciousness of Space and Time also presents the launch of ECLIPTICS, the first monograph on the work of Nolan Oswald Dennis, published by Zeitz MOCAA in collaboration with Swiss Institute New York and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König.

Alongside its FNB Art Joburg presentation, Zeitz MOCAA will activate a wider programme in Johannesburg, including a conversation with NIROX on the place of Ubuntu in law, art and politics, featuring Justice Albie Sachs, Dr Phokeng Setai, Assistant Curator at Zeitz MOCAA and curator of Spring is Rebellious: The Art & Life of Albie Sachs (2025-2026), Khanyisile Mawhayi, Assistant Curator at Zeitz MOCAA, Ithateng Mokgoro of the Yvonne Mokgoro Foundation, and Sven Christian of NIROX. At FNB Art Joburg, a further conversation will explore collective work and knowledge-making through the making of Xenolith (Letsema) (2024), featuring Talia Mzamane, Collections Administrator at Zeitz MOCAA, Jason Adams, Production Assistant at Zeitz MOCAA, and Motlhoki from Nolan Oswald Dennis’s studio, moderated by Khanyi Mawhayi. The Museum will also host a gathering bringing together members of Johannesburg’s creative, cultural and business communities. Together, these engagements extend the Museum’s presence in Johannesburg beyond the art fair, creating opportunities for intercultural exchange.

As a Pan-African and Pan-Diasporic institution, Zeitz MOCAA remains committed to producing and preserving cutting-edge exhibitions and art historical knowledge, supporting artists and strengthening its education programmes, while ensuring access for all. Its growing presence in Johannesburg reflects this commitment to extending the Museum’s reach by fostering dialogue and building meaningful connections across the continent.

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