Conversations | Liverpool Biennial 2023 presents ‘uMoya: The Cosmology of Breath’

Conversations | Liverpool Biennial 2023 presents ‘uMoya: The Cosmology of Breath’
Art Basel in Basel 2023, June 16

To breathe can be a political act, an urgent engagement of cosmological forces. This conversation, hosted by Khanyisile Mbongwa, curator of the Liverpool Biennial 2023, reflects on demonstration, protest, and other acts of resistance through the work of breathing with artists Nolan Oswald Dennis and Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński. The concept of uMoya, a cosmological life force – and one of the biennial’s central themes – is explored to account for recovery and staying in Black breath. The group also considers the question: how to continue to breathe in the knowledge of breathlessness? This talk coincides with the anniversary of the 1976 Soweto uprising, a series of demonstrations led by Black South African students against apartheid Bantu education.

Curated in collaboration with Khanyisile Mbongwa and Liverpool Biennial.
The Art Basel 2023 Conversations program is curated by Emily Butler. Coordination and support: Arianna Guidi.

‣ Nolan Oswald Dennis, artist, Johannesburg
‣ Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, artist and writer, Vienna
‣ Moderator: Khanyisile Mbongwa, Curator, Liverpool Biennial 2023, Cape Town


‣ Nolan Oswald Dennis is a para-disciplinary artist. Their practice explores ‘a black consciousness of space’ - the material and metaphysical conditions of decolonization - questioning histories of space and time through system-specific, rather than site-specific interventions. They hold a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and a Science Master’s degree in Art, Culture and Technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Their work has been featured in exhibitions at the Goodman Gallery (Johannesburg, Cape Town, London), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), MACBA (Barcelona), AutoItalia SouthEast (London), CAN (Neuchatel), the Young Congo Biennale (Kinshasa) among others. They are a founding member of artist group NTU and Index Literacy Program (ILP), as well as a research associate at the VIAD research centre at the University of Johannesburg. Oswald Dennis is represented by Goodman Gallery, Cape Town and London.

‣ Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński is a writer, visual artist, and researcher whose works manifest themselves through a variety of media. Rooted in Black feminist theory, she has developed a research-based and process-oriented investigative practice that often deals with archives, specifically with the voids in public archives and collections, as well as the conditions of Black life in an ongoing past. Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński’s works have been shown internationally. Recent solo and group shown include: Seven Scenes (2022) Camera Austria Graz, If A Tree Falls In A Forest (2022) Les Recontres d’Arles, KAS (2022) Centrale Fies, Kunsthalle Vienna (2021), The World is White No Longer. Ansichten einer dezentrierten Welt (2021) Museum der Moderne Salzburg.

‣ Khanyisile Mbongwa is a Cape Town-based independent curator, award-winning artist and sociologist who engages with her curatorial practice as Curing & Care, using the creative to instigate spaces for emancipatory practices, joy and play.
Mbongwa is the curator of Puncture Points, founding member and curator of Twenty Journey and former Executive Director of Handspring Trust Puppets. She is one of the founding members of arts collective Gugulective, Vasiki Creative Citizens and WOC poetry collective Rioters In Session. Mbongwa was a Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Institute of Creative Arts at the University of Cape Town, where she completed her masters in Interdisciplinary Arts, Public Art and the Public Sphere. She is currently a PhD candidate at UCT. Formerly Chief Curator of the 2020 Stellenbosch Triennale, other recent projects include: Process as Resistance, Resilience & Regeneration, CAT Cologne (2020), Athi-Patra Ruga :iiNyanka Zonyaka (The Lunar Songbook), Norval Foundation (2020), and History’s Footnote: On Love & Freedom at Marres, House for Contemporary Culture in Maastricht, Netherlands (2021).