Nolan Oswald Dennis explores the material, metaphysical, political, economic, geographic, and geologic conditions of African decolonization and black liberation, or what they call a “”black consciousness of space.”” These ideas materialize in diagrams, drawings, and models that use scientific and technical languages to reveal and obscure the hidden structures behind the alleged rationality of Western knowledge and its means of circulation. Dennis’s diagrams negate notions of rationality by reconfiguring meanings and relationships that spark new political and spatial imaginations.
In Atopia Field, Dennis uses the diagram as a tool to trace imaginary geographies of colonial space. They map imagined or propositional territories, nations, and cities drawn from the histories of PanAfrican liberation and diaspora, which are situated in the format of a legible yet ambiguous diagram. By displaying the work on the floor and allowing people to walk or lay on it, Dennis imbues imaginary space with physicality. In so doing, they aim to create a tool to remap via African socio-political imaginaries and assert other possible territories for collective habitation.
