17th October 2023 – Nyakallo Maleke

Nyakallo Maleke is an artist and writer based in Johannesburg and has a studio at Bag Factory. Her practice is grounded on an expanded concept of drawing, which she uses as a tool for building narratives about space, vulnerability, movement and fiction in relation to the public space. Maleke’s drawings take shape across disciplines, and it manifests in the form of installations, performative gestures, sound pieces, printmaking and sculpture. Her work continues to be invested in materiality, often combining tools such as pencils and charcoal with a meticulous embroidery-like stitching that is depicted on unconventional surfaces such as wax paper and plastic dropsheet.

Maleke completed a Master of Art in Public Sphere (with distinction) at the École de design et haute école d’art du Valais (édhéa), Switzerland (2019) and is an alumnus of the Asiko International Art School, Addis Ababa edition (2016) and graduated with BA Fine Art from Wits University in 2015. She has participated in group exhibitions at venues including NGO – Nothing Gets Organised, Johannesburg; Stevenson, Cape Town; Modzi Art Gallery, Lusaka, and the 13th Dak’art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal, in which she participated in the exhibition Canine Wisdom for the Barking Dog-The Dog Done Gone Deaf. Her first solo exhibition, titled Leaning Towards an Edge that Does Not Leak was held at the John Muafangego Art Centre in Windhoek, Namibia, in 2016. Maleke is also recognised as a fiction writer, and was recently shortlisted for the inaugural Toyin Falola Prize for her short story titled Eskia. In 2022 she participated in the Aichi Triennial in Aichi, Japan and the exhibition Echo, at Jenkins Johnson, USA. 

To find out more about Nyakallo’s work please click here and to find out more about Bag Factory, click here