The cover art for this issue is drawn from the 2021 Johannesburg exhibition conditions by Zambian/South African artist Nolan Oswald Dennis. Like much of Dennis's interdisciplinary practice, both of the featured pieces employ the model as a key form and method for reimagining the world. Together, model for theia and model for an endless column (suspended) are training objects for what the artist calls “a black consciousness of space,” which is to say the material and metaphysical conditions of decolonization itself.

Although Dennis's work ranges from diagrammatic drawings to digital essay games, it is unified by his enduring interest in the politics of space and time as seen from Africa, and specifically by the never-ending task of “making space by saying things differently, making time by seeing things otherwise” (Dennis n.d.). The model serves this project because of its special relationship to knowledge. Models are often overlooked in favor...

Issue Section:
Introductions
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