Demonstrations (i) presents a way of examining the world through a series of gestures which draw connections between systems both planetary and terrestrial, and trace possibilities for transformation. Based in Johannesburg, South Africa, artist Nolan Oswald Dennis contemplates this inquiry through a systems-based approach, creating models, drawings, and spatial interventions that continuously grow and foster participation in each new part of the world their work travels.

This exhibition is comprised of several components: at the center is Isivivane, an ongoing artwork that asks the hosting institution to 3-D print rock samples from around the world, providing a technological alternative to historically extractive practices for acquiring indigenous objects and specimens. Translated from Zulu as a "pile of stones” marking a spiritually or historically significant site, the term Isivivane also refers to the concept of a future not built by a single person, but by many over time. For Dennis, it is one that is informed by generations of African and diasporic writers and poets who have fought for liberation and decolonized land.

Accompanying Isivivane is a rotating display of geological specimens from collections local to San Diego, as well as Interference Station, an audio work that plays recorded interviews between the artist and prominent South African geologists. Demonstrations(i) also includes models, diagrams, posters and drawings that speculate possibilities of other worlds. In further notes 4 a planet (nine-dash), a grid of nine panels distribute a text collection of “world words” and hooks that may be connected by beaded strings that contain excerpts by the South African poet Keorapetse Kgositsile. Together, these works act as prototypes for a process of liberation, and probe viewers to imagine worlds sustained through relation rather than possession.

Exhibiting for the first time on the West Coast, Nolan Oswald Dennis was first commissioned as part of Reverse Forward and All at Once, curated by Gabi Ngcobo for INSITE Commonplaces. Established in 2021, Commonplaces is a curatorial platform for producing work with artists and communities, commissioned locally in different regions of the world, including Johannesburg, South Africa; Lima, Peru; and the transborder region of San Diego, California and Baja California, Mexico.